Wickes has opened its first high street store in Tunbridge Wells, Kent, as part of its growing multichannel offer.
The 700sq ft st store opened last month and will enable the retailer to test the high street market. It carries 5,000 products in store, which are all small enough to be carried out after purchase, with a further 4,000 products available to order.

Wickes has spent the past two years putting the business infrastructure in place to support smaller format stores, including a national next day delivery service on big and bulky items.

Multichannel development director Simon Holder said: "We are really excited to be trialling this new format high street store. With catalogue and online sales up 20% year-on-year, we are leveraging this with an extended multichannel offering.

"This high street store will allow us to target both the DIY market and our core trade customer, providing them with a conveniently located store. Larger products can be ordered in store for next day delivery, but the location means that tradesmen working on projects within the area do not need to make an out-of-town trip to a retail park."

Wickes is planning to open further trial high street stores throughout 2012, and will also launch its new transactional mobile site early next year.