Potential for 'hundreds' of Botanist sites

The company will open a further two Botanists before its year end in March – taking the total estate to 14 and the Botanist brand to nine.

Hill said: “The real opportunity for us in terms of growth of the Botanist brand is in the market towns and large villages around the UK. That gives us a huge scope and there’s no reason there couldn’t be hundreds of sites. The task is to make sure that we keep it relevant and we’re not just growing for the sake of it.”

New World Trading Company reported record sales over the Christmas period with its first ever £1m week. Hill said sales in the week before Christmas had hit £950,000.

It came on the back of a strong year of trading for the company, which recorded sales up 83% to £17.7m for the year to 31 March 2015 with like-for-like sales up 3.5%, and adjusted profit increasing 58% to £2.3m. Hill said the company was on track to achieve revenue of £30m in this financial year.

The next three openings for NWTC will be Botanists in Farnham, Surrey and Knutsford, Cheshire and The Club House in the Liverpool ONE development.

As previously reported by M&C Hill has set a target of six openings per year going forward. He said next year’s openings would be dominated by the Botanist brand but that the third Trading House location had been identified.

On the geography for expansion, Hill said: “We have established our spine which is down the M6 and onto the M40 and we are creating a cluster of sites around London. The next logical step is to move west and we are looking strongly at places like Cardiff, Bristol and Bath. But we want to make sure that expansion is sustainable and that we know the next step before we venture out that way.”