Soult's Retail View

Discount UK (former Woolworths), Newcastle (4 Nov 2011)

Poundworld-owned variety retailer Discount UK has opened its Newcastle store today, with stilt walkers and free sweets on hand to welcome shoppers to the former Woolworths site.

I dropped by shortly after the store opened at 10am, and it seemed to have got off to a … Continue Reading

Signage at UGO Lundwood (11 Oct 2011)

The emergence of UGO as Britain’s newest discount supermarket chain has been one of the most interesting retail launches of 2011 so far.

Back in January, I reported on Asda’s OFT-instigated divestment of 47 Netto stores, and the news that Haldanes would be … Continue Reading

Tesco in Eger, Hungary (15 Jul 2006)

Today’s release of fairly weak UK trading figures from Tesco – where like-for-like sales, excluding petrol and VAT, fell by 0.5% in the first half of the year – has unsurprisingly prompted much media discussion, both about Tesco specifically and the state of the … Continue Reading

Wellchester's Claire Robertson (8 Sep 2011)

For someone who makes a habit of visiting old Woolworths – and I’ve racked up about 140 so far – there can be few ex-Woolies sites more celebrated than the one in Dorchester (store #403).

The story is well known: … Continue Reading

New BHS, Swindon (11 Sep 2011)

While visiting Swindon’s out-of-town John Lewis at Home, I also managed to spent some time exploring the town centre.

The open-air Parade shopping centre has the distinction of hosting one of the UK’s few (as … Continue Reading

Point-of-sale promotion of the Asda Price Guarantee

Judging from the number of hits – currently 900+, and rising – many of you enjoyed my recent illustrated post about Asda’s Old Fold Road store in Gateshead, following its impressive transformation from a Netto.

While the increase in product lines and instore services … Continue Reading

Signage at UGO store, Eston (4 May 2011)

Since first meeting them at the UGO launch press conference back in January, it’s been a pleasure to develop a really good relationship with the key people at both the … Continue Reading

Wilkinson, Gateshead (14 Feb 2011)

Given that a significant chunk of Gateshead town centre is currently flattened and awaiting redevelopment, it’s pleasing to see one of the town’s biggest retailers investing in its store.

Along with Tesco, the long-established Wilkinson store in the Interchange Centre is probably the town centre’s … Continue Reading

UGO cake

Following my recent post about Asda’s divestment of 39 surplus Netto stores, I had the pleasure of being invited to my first press conference last Friday, in Leeds. 

Appropriately held just a short distance from Asda’s corporate HQ, the event was organised by Haldanes, the fledgling independent grocer who, as I blogged before, … Continue Reading

Old-style BHS logo, Carlisle (14 Dec 2010)

Back in September 2009, Soult’s Retail View readers seemed to enjoy my exposé of an old-style WHSmith logo at the rear of the branch in Redcar – well over a decade after that logo was supposedly retired.

In November last year, the early … Continue Reading

New and old logos

Last week’s news that the celebrated Wellworths store, in Dorchester, is being forced to change its name by Shop Direct reignites one of the most interesting threads to emerge from Woolworths’ collapse – the battle for the good bits of Woolies’ legacy.

The gist of this latest development is that Shop Direct – who, you’ll remember, bought the Woolworths brand … Continue Reading

Yet Another Sale

This guest post was written by Simon Barnett. Graham has kindly allowed me to write a few words on the subject of discount retailing. I have experience in this area and regularly contribute to a website about online discount codes.

Reading Graham’s post about his visit to Barnard Castle, I was struck by his observations of the discounting approach that’s been taken by the Edinburgh Woollen Mill chain of stores. Like many retailers, it seems … Continue Reading

Existing Kingston store

The much-blogged-about Swedish hardware retailer Clas Ohlson published its sales figures for June yesterday.

What’s interesting is that sales for the UK are now being stripped out from those of Finland, giving us a much clearer idea of how the UK business is doing. Total sales were SEK 442m, of which the seven UK stores accounted for SEK 15m. A year ago, the UK business delivered sales … Continue Reading

Upcoming PC World and Currys store in Northumberland Street, Newcastle (17 Jun 2010)

I was curious to read Retail Week’s recent article about the electricals retailer DSGi trialling a small-size dual fascia Currys and PC World store at Bluewater, following its successful introduction of two-in-one megastores … Continue Reading

Screenshot of holding page (15 Feb 2010)

Google ‘Vergo Retail’, and the likelihood is that you’ll currently find Soult’s Retail View among the top few search results. Indeed, since this blog launched in July, five of the top ten searches that people have used to find the site have related to the Liverpool-based department store operator, with … Continue Reading

Shop Direct's Woolworths.co.uk

Just a quick post this evening, but I wanted to flag up a well-written and interesting article by Kiran Stacey in yesterday’s Financial Times, entitled “The fight to be Woolworths’ heir”.

The piece covers some of the same themes as my own blog posts about Wellworths, Alworths and … Continue Reading

Whitley Road in Whitley Bay (16 December 2009)

Visiting Whitley Bay in North Tyneside today, it was apparent that while there ARE indeed a lot of empty shops – as blogged about previously here – there’s still just about enough going on to keep shoppers interested. I’ll give a fuller rundown of my visit, including my reaction to the newly opened … Continue Reading

Vacant former Woolworths store

An interesting story in today’s Times about what it claims is Shop Direct’s plan to “bring Woolworths back to the high street”, with “room for up to 200 stores under the famous red fascia”.

Of course, some might well claim that Woolworths has already been brought back to the high street in the form of … Continue Reading

Alworths in Amersham

Following in the footsteps of Dorchester’s Wellworths, Stornoway’s Wee W and even Wallsend’s Well Worth It, the latest ‘son of Woolworths’ store – Alworths – opened the doors to its second store in Amersham, Buckinghamshire yesterday.

To date, the various Woolies ‘offspring’ have  tended to be one-off, locally-driven responses to the gap that Woolworths … Continue Reading

Hollister's website, including the '1922' device

I can’t claim to know much about Abercrombie & Fitch’s sister brand, Hollister, and if I did, I suspect it’s somewhere that might be outside of both my price and age brackets. To be fair though, Hollister’s presence in the UK is pretty new – the first store, at Brent Cross, opened only last year – with … Continue Reading