B&M Brand Guidelines: Billington & Mayman, the Arora Brothers & Big Brands, Big Savings

Two surnames shortened to two letters.

B&M began in 1978 on the Lancashire coast. The company’s own history page says the business was founded that year with its first store in Blackpool; English Wikipedia places the first shop in Cleveleys, a resort just north of Blackpool, and names the founders as Malcolm Billington and Brian Mayman. The original name, Billington & Mayman, was soon shortened to the initials the chain still trades under, English Wikipedia says.

For its first quarter-century B&M stayed regional. English Wikipedia records a management buyout financed by Phildrew Investments in October 1996. In December 2004 the brothers Simon and Bobby Arora bought the business from Phildrew; the company says it then traded from 21 stores, and The Grocer, in a feature published on 18 September 2020, described it as a little-known, loss-making regional chain with about 20 stores and six buyers at the time of the purchase.

The Aroras expanded quickly, often into empty shops left by others. English Wikipedia says that in September 2006 the company bought the GlynWebb chain of DIY stores and converted them into a larger format called B&M Home Store, and that it later took over former Kwik Save, Woolworths and Au Naturale units and, in May 2011, some Focus DIY stores. In 2010 the company moved into a new head office and distribution centre in Speke, Liverpool, the company says, and it opened its 300th UK store in 2012.

A listing, a German stake and a French chain.

Outside investors arrived next. The company says the private equity firm Clayton, Dubilier & Rice bought a significant stake in 2013 (English Wikipedia dates the deal to December 2012), and B&M listed on the London Stock Exchange in 2014. Reporting on the first full-year results as a public company, City A.M. wrote on 28 May 2015 that the chain sold “everything from toys to electrical goods and furniture,” had opened 52 new stores in the year and had bought a majority stake in the German value retailer Jawoll. The company says it joined the FTSE 250 index in June 2015 and opened its 500th UK store in 2016.

Food grew in importance. In 2017 B&M bought Heron Foods, a chain of value convenience stores selling frozen, chilled and ambient food, and English Wikipedia says some Heron branches were trialled as B&M Express from 2018. In October 2018 the group bought the French variety chain Babou; the company says all its French stores had been rebranded as B&M by 2022. In September 2020 B&M joined the FTSE 100, six years after floating, The Grocer reported, when it had more than 650 B&M stores, or over 900 counting Heron Foods.

The Grocer also described how the shops work. Around half the range is food and grocery, mostly from well-known brands rather than own labels, and the fascia’s strapline is “B&M, Big Brands, Big Savings.” The 2020 annual report, as quoted by The Grocer, said the chain introduced about 100 new general merchandise lines a week, from garden and DIY goods to homewares and toys, so that each visit offered something new.

The names on the fascias follow the formats. Most shops carry the plain B&M name, while the larger converted DIY sites became B&M Home Store and the trial Heron conversions B&M Express, English Wikipedia says; Heron Foods keeps its own name. Distribution grew with the estate: the company says it opened a second distribution centre at Speke in 2014, added two more in the North West in 2016 and brought a large centre in Bedford into full operation in January 2020 to serve new stores in the south of England. The 600th UK store opened in 2018 and the 700th, at Border Retail Park in Wrexham, on 4 February 2022, according to the company and English Wikipedia. Speaking to The Grocer in 2020, an HSBC retail analyst said customers could shop many categories in one visit, “whether it’s garden, DIY, grocery, home or toys.”

How discount and variety chains present themselves.

Discount and variety retailers tend to put their offer into the name itself. Some chains take a price as their name, as Poundland did in 1990 and 99p Stores did after it; others use initials, a family name or a short invented word. When a chain built on a single price begins to sell items above it, the name stays on the fascia while the range changes behind it, and advertising rules can then limit what the shop is allowed to say about its prices.

The fascia carries most of the identity. A shop sign on a high street or retail park usually pairs the name with a short strapline, such as B&M’s “Big Brands, Big Savings,” described by The Grocer in 2020. Inside, the same name and colours tend to repeat on aisle headers, shelf tickets, seasonal end displays and carrier bags, so that a shopper sees one consistent mark from the car park to the till.

Own-label naming is a quieter part of the system. Variety chains often sell well-known brands alongside goods under their own labels, and some suppliers prefer their products to appear under a retailer’s name rather than their own. Formats are named in the same plain way: a home store, a local convenience shop, an express branch, each a variation on the parent name rather than a separate brand.

The corporate side is published separately. Listed or formerly listed chains keep investor pages with dated histories of founders, owners, acquisitions and listings, and those pages, read alongside independent press, are a dependable guide to who owns a fascia at any given time. In this sector ownership changes often, through buyouts, listings, sales and administrations, and the guides in this series give those changes with their dates.

New chief executives, empty units and a move to Jersey.

Leadership changed in the 2020s. Simon Arora stepped down as chief executive in September 2022 after 17 years in the role and was succeeded by Alex Russo, English Wikipedia says. On 15 May 2025 Retail Gazette reported that B&M had appointed Tjeerd Jegen, a retail executive who had held senior roles at Ahold Delhaize, Metro, Tesco, Woolworths, Hema and Takko Fashion, as chief executive from 16 June 2025, taking over from the finance director, who had been acting as interim chief executive.

The chain kept taking over space left by other retailers. English Wikipedia says B&M bought 51 former Wilko stores from the administrators in September 2023 and, after Homebase entered administration in 2024, reopened some of its stores under the B&M Home Store format. As of October 2025, according to English Wikipedia, the group ran 764 B&M stores in the UK, 129 in France and 338 Heron Foods stores. In 2026 the parent company moved its corporate home from Luxembourg to Jersey and was registered there as B&M European Value Retail plc, the company says; its head office remains in Speke, Liverpool.

For a design guide, B&M shows how two initials and a short strapline can carry a large, mixed range of branded goods. Compare Home Bargains, another British variety chain, and Poundland, a single-price chain on many of the same high streets. For this guide we use a plum, an ink blue and a sunflower yellow on paper with a sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep B&M’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.