Sonae's Wells Chain Chases 350 Health-and-Beauty Stores by 2030 With €10 Million a Year

Wells, the health-and-beauty chain owned by the Portuguese retail group Sonae, has set itself a target of 350 shops by 2030, betting that Portuguese consumers will keep spending on skincare, supplements and wellness services even as the wider retail market tightens. The brand currently runs 310 stores and plans to add them at a steady clip — around ten new openings and twenty refits a year, underpinned by roughly €10 million of annual investment.

The 350-store goal is timed to the brand's 25th anniversary in 2030. Wells sits at the softer, more service-heavy end of retail: alongside dermocosmetics and beauty products it sells nutritional supplements, runs optical services, and offers in-store wellness and health advice, positioning itself somewhere between a pharmacy, a parapharmacy and a beauty shop. Roughly 70% of its customers are women, and online sales now account for more than a tenth of turnover, a share the company wants to push higher through an omnichannel model that links its website to the physical network.

The expansion is being launched from a position of strength. In the first half of 2026, Sonae's health-and-beauty arm — which houses Wells alongside the Spanish perfumery chain Druni — booked €469 million in revenue from Wells, up 13.1% on the same period a year earlier. Taken together, Wells and Druni generated €906 million over the six months, a 12.3% increase, making health and beauty one of the fastest-growing corners of the Sonae empire at a time when grocery and general retail have grown more slowly.

Margarida Oliveira, Wells's general director, framed the strategy as one of "continuation and focus" rather than reinvention — deepening what already works instead of chasing new formats. In practice that means renewing the existing estate as aggressively as opening new sites: the twenty annual remodels are meant to keep older shops from looking tired next to the flagships the chain has rolled out in recent years, including a large store in Lisbon's Chiado district in 2025 and another at the Centro Colombo mall in 2026.

Four more openings are planned before the end of this year, the next of them at the Oeiras Parque shopping centre on the western edge of Greater Lisbon. Management has also declined to rule out taking the brand abroad, hinting that international expansion could eventually follow once the domestic footprint is filled out — a notable ambition for a chain that has until now been almost entirely Portuguese.

For residents, the practical upshot is more of a familiar high-street name in shopping centres and town centres, and a continuing shift of everyday health and beauty spending away from traditional pharmacies toward the parapharmacy model. For Sonae, Wells is proof that a well-defined speciality format can keep growing double digits even when consumers are watching their budgets — and a reason to keep pouring money into bricks and mortar at a moment when much of retail is retreating online.