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Retail network planning
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United Kingdom
Retail network planning built on validated UK footfall
Decide where to open, relocate or close stores with weekly footfall, catchment and competitor data for any UK address.
Get a free analysis of your locations
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.
We handle your details in line with UK GDPR.
Retail network planning decides where your stores should be: which towns to enter, which stores to relocate and which leases to let go. Huq gives UK retail teams weekly footfall, catchment and competitor data for any address, from high streets to retail parks. It doesn't forecast sales or optimise the network for you. It gives your planners comparable evidence on open stores and on sites you haven't opened yet.
How Huq supports retail network planning
The video is a tour of the whole Huq platform. With a store estate in mind, watch how the Explore map layers brand locations, catchments and travel times over any UK area, how footfall trends compare across many locations, and how Projects keep a large store list in one place for your property board.
- Map your stores, competitors and candidate sites on one Explore map, with catchment and travel-time layers.
- Compare footfall trends across the estate to see which stores sit in growing or declining locations.
- Group stores and candidate sites in Projects to track openings, relocations and lease events in one place.
Trusted by 300+ organisations · Data across 35 markets
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What is retail network planning?
Retail network planning is the work of deciding how many stores a brand needs, where they should be and in what format. In the UK it usually runs alongside the lease calendar. Each break clause or renewal is a chance to stay, move, downsize or exit, and each new store location has to earn its place against the stores already trading nearby.
Good store network planning answers three questions. Where is demand strong but your presence weak? Which stores sit in locations that are losing footfall? And where would an opening take sales from your own stores rather than add to them?
The second question needs care, because a weak store is not always a weak location. PizzaExpress combined monthly footfall with sales across 370+ UK stores to separate location problems from operational ones. Huq supports this with footfall for any UK address, catchments by postcode, cross-visitation between sites and brand locations.
What's in your retail network planning analysis
01
Footfall for every store
Weekly footfall for your stores and candidate sites, with trends, average daily footfall and period-on-period change.
02
Catchments by postcode
Catchment and drive-time analysis by postcode, so you can see where each store's visitors actually come from.
03
Overlap between your stores
Cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs shows where stores share customers and an opening could cannibalise sales.
04
Competitors and co-tenants
Brand location and industry layers show who trades near each site on the high street, in centres and on retail parks.
What a store network plan shows
Three views that network and property teams use most when they review a UK estate.
01
Your estate on the Explore map
Plot every store next to competitor brand locations, shopping centres and retail centres, then add catchment and travel-time layers to spot gaps and overlaps.
02
Footfall trends by location
Compare weekly footfall and period-on-period change across stores to tell a weak location from a weak store, before a lease event forces the decision.
03
Projects for lease events
Group stores, candidate sites and upcoming lease events into Projects, track their status, and share CSV, Excel or monthly PDF reports with your property committee.
Retail network planning for any UK location
Huq covers any address in the UK: high streets, shopping centres, retail parks, competitors' stores and sites you haven't opened yet. No counters, sensors or cameras needed.
Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year, and data refreshes weekly.
How it works
Step 1
Tell us your locations
Add up to five addresses in the form. Your own stores, candidate sites or competitors.
Step 2
We run the analysis
Our team maps each location from observed visitor data.
Step 3
We walk you through it
A short call to take you through what the data shows and what it means for you.
Why UK retailers use Huq for retail network planning
- Huq publishes its accuracy by country: an 18.7% median error in Great Britain against landlord-reported footfall.
- JD Sports, a UK retailer, got 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk.
- Ripon BID saw footfall up 164% year on year.
- Trusted by 300+ organisations across 35 markets, including the global insights, research and location intelligence teams at Nike, Adidas, JD Sports and Samsung.
huq's platform gave us valuable data to support a key decision on potential new sites.
Dan Brogden
National Sales Manager, Puccinos
Who it's for
01
Retail chains of any size
From five-store retailers planning their next site to global brands: choose locations, track store performance and benchmark against competitors.
02
Retail property owners
Show centre performance, support leasing and get the tenant mix right, for landlords, asset managers and brokers.
03
Investors and private equity
Check how retail brands and assets actually perform before you buy, and monitor them after.
Everything Huq measures, in one platform
- Footfall: by week, month and year, with totals, average daily footfall, trends, period-on-period change, and visiting vs passing traffic.
- Residents and visitors.
- Catchment and travel time: catchment by postcodes, plus drive-time and travel-time analysis.
- Demographics and profiling: age, gender and purchasing power.
- Behaviour: visit frequency, dwell time, time of day and dayparts, cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs, and international visitation for tourism.
- Footfall density and transportation mode.
- Places, brands and industries: points of interest, brand locations and brand analysis, industry performance, shopping centre and retail centre types.
- Geo-spend: spend by volume and category at any UK location, via Experian.
- Tools: the Explore map (draw any area or use layers for travel time, catchment, shopping centres, retail centres, brand locations, industries and postcodes), White Space Analysis, and Projects for monitoring many locations and reporting to stakeholders.
- Delivery: the platform, CSV or Excel exports, monthly PDF location reports, and data feeds as Parquet and CSV files into Amazon S3 or Google Cloud Storage buckets.
- Cadence: data refreshes weekly.
Frequently asked questions
What is retail network planning?
Retail network planning is how a retailer decides how many stores it needs, where they should be and in what format. It covers openings, relocations, closures and refits, and looks at the estate as a whole rather than one site at a time, so each decision accounts for the stores already trading nearby.
What does location planning software do?
Location planning software puts your stores, competitors and candidate sites on one map with the data to compare them. Huq adds weekly footfall for any UK address, catchments by postcode, drive-time analysis, cross-visitation and brand locations, with exports to CSV or Excel and monthly PDF reports for stakeholders.
How do retailers choose a new store location?
Most start with demand: footfall and catchment around the site. Then they check competition and co-tenants nearby, and how much the catchment overlaps with their existing stores. For UK retailer JD Sports, this kind of analysis meant 25% more precise catchment analysis and 18% lower new-store location risk.
Can Huq show whether a new store will cannibalise existing stores?
Huq shows the signals behind cannibalisation: how much a candidate site's catchment overlaps with your nearby stores, and cross-visitation between up to 10 location pairs. If many visitors already go to both places, a new store is more likely to move sales than add them.
Which UK locations does Huq cover, and how often is the data updated?
Huq covers any address in the UK, including high streets, shopping centres, retail parks, competitor stores and sites you haven't opened. No counters or sensors are needed. Data refreshes weekly, and Huq manually validates more than 1,000 locations in each of its 35 markets twice a year.
What does the free network planning analysis include?
Tell us which stores, lease events or target towns you want to look at. Huq's team will run them through the platform and send back footfall, catchment and competitor data for each. Starting with stores you already know is the quickest way to judge whether the numbers match what you see on the ground.
Questions? Talk to us
Book a demoAbout Huq
Huq is a location intelligence company. We turn anonymised mobile location data into footfall, catchment and visitor insight for any place, so retailers, property owners and local authorities can make decisions on evidence.
See how your locations really perform
Up to 5 locations. No cost, no commitment.