John Lewis Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

Following the confirmation, in April, that John Lewis will indeed be opening one of its ‘At Home’ stores in Tamworth, work on site seems to be proceeding rapidly ahead of the Ventura Park store’s planned autumn opening.

Screens around the site make it difficult to get a good photograph, but when I dropped by earlier today the steel frame looked to be largely in place. Meanwhile, the vast scale of the 42,000 sq ft shop is already apparent, with the premises dominating the main route into the retail park (below).

John Lewis Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

The Tamworth store will be the fifth John Lewis at Home shop to open since the concept launched, in Poole, in October 2009, and one of two (with Chester) to open this year. Two more stores are scheduled to open in 2012: one in Newbury, and another – announced this week – in Ashford.

However, work on the ‘at Home’ store that was originally announced for Exeter city centre appears to be on hold, with reports that a full-line John Lewis department store is now planned for the site instead. Wednesday’s Ashford announcement cites all the other future openings, yet any mention of the Exeter store is noticeably absent.

Cardinal Point, Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

Barely 100m from the Tamworth John Lewis, work is also progressing on the separate Cardinal Point retail development, which will house new stores for B&Q, Next and Maplin.

Cardinal Point, Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

These developments add to a sprawling retail cluster that already includes a large Sainsbury’s, Asda and M&S, as well as more than twenty other retail park staples such as Boots, Outfit, Homebase and Hobbycraft.

Ventura Park stores (17 Jun 2011)

However, the way in which Ventura Park has grown up over the years means that it comprises half a dozen distinct, but adjacent, retail zones, each with its own car park. This, and the distinctly unfriendly pedestrian environment, means that shoppers will often move between two or three different car parks over the course of one visit, adding to the traffic pressures.

Road improvement works at Ventura Park, Tamworth (17 Jun 2011)

I was therefore relieved to see that improvements are being made to Ventura Park’s overburdened road system, which – in a case of very bad planning – also includes the main access route between Tamworth and the A5 dual carriageway.

With the John Lewis and B&Q developments likely to attract even more visitors to what is already one of the Midlands’ busiest retail parks, these improvements surely can’t come soon enough.

John Lewis logo

No, don’t choke on your cornflakes… that’s a serious question.

My interest was piqued last month when the Tamworth Herald ran a story under the headline ”Striking design’ of unit to be built next to Herald offices’, on the town’s ever-growing Ventura Retail Park.

In it, the piece gave a few more details about what the new unit would be like, describing it as “similar in size to [Ventura's] Marks and Spencer, ASDA and Sainsbury’s” and “one of the more dominant outlets on the retail park.” It added that “while no details of which retailer will move into the building have been revealed, the building’s ‘striking’ design was unveiled last month.”

M&S at Ventura Park, Tamworth (24 Dec 2009)

This immediately got me thinking. After all, there aren’t many retailers, besides John Lewis and Best Buy, who are currently opening massive, ‘strikingly’ designed stores on retail parks. B&Q was another possibility, but the same edition of the Herald had revealed that the DIY retailer was already going to be opening a new store behind Sainsbury’s, at nearby Cardinal Point, alongside a new Next and a branch of Maplin.

Publicly available planning applications are often a good source of extra information, but it’s taken me until now to check out the application for the development in question (0648/2010) – which was submitted at the end of November and approved in January. It seems that a development of the size proposed was actually already approved for this site in 2008, so the application was for a ‘variation of conditions’, with revised plans and elevations, rather than an entirely new proposal.

I was curious to see the ‘striking’ design of the building, so took a look at the elevation drawings attached to the application. Here’s a screenshot (click image to view in larger size):

Screenshot of elevation drawings

Hmmm… a large building with lots of double-height glazing, grey cladding and white lettering. Where have I seen that before? Let’s do a Google Image Search for ‘John Lewis at Home’… (again, click to see it a larger size)

Google Image search for 'John Lewis at Home' (16 Feb 2011)

What do you reckon? In the event that the new store isn’t going to be John Lewis, it’s certainly doing its very best to resemble one.

The idea of ‘John Lewis Tamworth’ may sound far-fetched to begin with – after all, the town is not known for attracting more upmarket retailers, and has a town centre that has become increasingly value-focused. However, John Lewis’s new ‘at Home’ format makes the prospect quite plausible.

Largely based on out-of-town retail parks, four such stores have opened to date – in Poole, Croydon, Swindon and Tunbridge Wells – with two more planned for Exeter (on a city centre site that used to be Debenhams) and Chester. Each John Lewis at Home offers the retailer’s full range of  furniture, furnishing accessories, electricals and home technology, though items from other departments – including fashion, beauty and nursery – can be ordered instore for home delivery or next-day collection.

If John Lewis is looking to plug the gap between its Solihull, Leicester and Nottingham stores, Tamworth’s sprawling and bustling Ventura Retail Park – which attracts visitors from all across the Midlands thanks to its strong offer and easy connections to the motorway network – begins to make good sense as a location.

Of course, two other important debates – what the continued expansion of Ventura Retail Park means for local traffic congestion and for Tamworth town centre – must not be neglected, and key to this is making it easier for Ventura visitors to access the town centre’s attractions.

Still, if John Lewis were to open in Tamworth, that would be rather a fantastic coup, wouldn’t it?

Main entrance of The Range, Stockton-on-Tees (31 Jul 2010)

Yesterday I finally paid a visit – by car – to the former Big W on Portrack Lane in Stockton-on-Tees, having twice failed to find a way of getting there by bus from Stockton High Street. Since April this year, the premises have housed a branch of the home, leisure and garden retailer The Range.

Of the 33 North East Woolworths stores that closed following the company’s collapse, this is the 32nd one that I’ve visited and photographed. Something tells me a trip to Berwick-upon-Tweed will be engineered before the summer’s out.

The Range, Stockton (31 Jul 2010)

The site of Portrack’s Lane old Woolies has had quite an elaborate history. For many years, since the 1960s, the premises housed the iconic North East home and garden retailer Dickens. Badging itself as “the home improvement hypermarket”, Dickens was a pioneer of the out-of-town DIY superstore, with its advertising in the 1970s claiming that there was “nothing else like it in the country.”

In the 1980s and 90s, Dickens expanded beyond its Portrack Lane site to become a familiar site across the North East, opening stores at Shiremoor, Washington, Scotswood and Darlington. However, Dickens’ store estate proved highly attractive to its expanding competitors, and the retailer was bought out by B&Q in April 1999. The newer sites were all intended to be converted to the B&Q fascia (though Shiremoor was, I believe, later sold on to Boundary Mill Stores instead) but the presence of an existing B&Q Warehouse nearby meant that the Stockton site was surplus to requirements.

In those days, however, B&Q was owned by Kingfisher – the retail conglomerate that also included Woolworths, Comet and Superdrug – making the Stockton site an ideal location for one of the first wave of Big W superstores. The 100,000 sq ft Big W store opened in October 2000; by 2004, however – as I blogged about previously – the Big W concept had already been scrapped. Just as the Tamworth Big W store was split in two, others in the 21-strong chain were also earmarked for downsizing.

Between 2004 and its eventual closure on 30 December 2008, I’m not entirely clear whether part of the Stockton Big W was simply closed off, or whether the full floorspace continued to be used. Certainly, by the time it closed, the store was trading as Woolworths, and featured various concessions such as Peacocks. I’m sure there will be a Soult’s Retail View reader who can fill in the gaps for us.

Whatever the score was with Woolies, The Range apparently occupies 60,000 sq ft, meaning that there must be 40,000 sq ft going spare somewhere. Certainly, it’s clear from the outside of the property that not all of it is in use. The Range has reclad the section that it occupies, replacing Woolies’ white and red appearance with its own blue and orange scheme. However, the apparently unoccupied section remains untouched, as can be seen in the shot below.

The join of old and new (31 Jul 2010)

Get a little closer, and you can see that an old roof-mounted Woolworths (or Big W?) sign remains in place, highlighting the store’s ranges – clothes, toys, home, baby, cards, party, entertainment, confectionery and gifts.

Old Woolworths or Big W signage remains in place (31 Jul 2010)

Underneath, there’s also still a sign for the long-gone ‘Big Cafe’.

Big Cafe sign at Stockton's former Big W (31 Jul 2010)

However, my visit was not intended to be just a Woolies nostalgia trip – I was also curious to visit The Range for the first time, given that the Stockton store is the chain’s first in the North East.

On this blog, you may recall that my only previous mention of The Range was two months ago, when the chain’s owner, Chris Dawson, was reportedly interested in buying up some of the stores and stock of the collapsed Vergo Retail empire. For whatever reason, nothing came of that in the end, and all the Vergo stores apart from Robbs in Hexham, which was bought by Beales, were subsequently closed. Even without that transaction, however, The Range has been expanding aggressively in the last eighteen months, with 45 stores now compared to the 33 that it had in February last year.

The Range, Stockton (31 Jul 2010)

My first impression on entering the Stockton store was quite how massive it was. It may be only a portion of the old Big W, but it’s still plenty of space to accommodate quite extensive ranges across many categories, with crafts, gardening, stationery, homewares, furniture, DIY, pet supplies, toys and camping among the various departments featured.

I was also quite impressed by the quality of the store environment and merchandising, with everything much smarter and better organised than I’d perhaps expected. Recalling a visit to the Tamworth Big W not long after it opened, you might say that The Range is, in many ways, Big W’s obvious successor – stocking similar categories but arguably making a better job of filling the vast space and making it work.

Visiting an hour before closing time on Saturday, The Range seemed to be doing decent business, with plenty of cars in the car park and people laden with purchases in the store itself. Assuming that the Stockton branch is a success, it’s hard to imagine that more North East branches of The Range won’t follow, though there must be relatively few existing units that are of sufficient size.

Who knows, perhaps The Range could consider taking over all or part of the 120,000 sq ft former ILVA and Marks & Spencer Lifestore site in Gateshead, which has sat empty for the last two years? After housing two ill-fated furniture and homewares stores – that were both beautiful, but ultimately too expensive – The Range could be the more populist retailer that is needed to finally make that unit work.

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 in retail park locations such as Leeds, Fulham, Bristol, Hedge End and Merry Hill.

Though not mentioned in the article, anyone walking along Northumberland Street in recent weeks will have noticed that Newcastle city centre is getting a combined high street Currys and PC World too, replacing what was previously Currys.digital and, before that, Dixons. According to the signs on site, the new store is set to open on 12 August, following quite significant renovations to the property.

Northumberland Street scene, Newcastle (17 June 2010)

I understand, incidentally, that the first floor of the Currys building – until recently the Hustler Pool Club and Leo’s Restaurant – is to become a branch of Cotswold Outdoor, while Hustler’s and Leo’s will be opening up in new premises elsewhere in the city centre.

At the same time, DSGi is apparently not the only large footprint retailer looking at more compact sites in urban centres. The DIY market leader B&Q is reportedly set to “open small-format city centre stores in the UK after the success of similar pilot stores run by parent Kingfisher overseas.”

B&Q store. Photograph by David Wright

When it says ‘small’, it’s important to recognise that these will still be good sized stores – though more compact than B&Q’s present smallest sites, 35,000 to 40,000 sq ft is still double the floorspace of a typical Clas Ohlson store, one of the retailers with which a homeware-focused city centre B&Q might be expected to compete.

It does open up interesting possibilities for the types of unit that B&Q might bring back into use, particularly if the retailer is prepared to go for premises that occupy more than one level – former department stores, for example. However, with the first new format stores not set to open for 18 months or so, it will still be a little while before we get to see exactly what B&Q’s venture into town and city centres will look like.

B&Q store. Photograph by David Wright

I was interested to read Retail Week’s comment piece today on the introduction of self-serve checkouts to B&Q, and to note the author’s scepticism over whether such a system really works in the context of a DIY store.

As I commented on the article, self-service checkouts were also in place at B&Q Scotswood (in Newcastle) when I shopped there a week ago. Having never used such a service before, I was pleasantly surprised by the speed and ease of use.

There are a couple of provisos, though. First, I was only buying a couple of small items that could be easily carried, so I can’t really comment on how a self-serve checkout might work when making a larger or bulkier purchase.

Second, the usefulness of self service terminals is obviously influenced by the efficiency – or otherwise - of the regular checkouts. Given that B&Q Scotswood routinely has only one or two checkouts open, even at the height of the weekend, I was rather pleased to have the opportunity to circumvent the long queues. In other circumstances, I would probably still prefer to be served by a real person.

Beyond B&Q, it does appear that self-serve checkouts are becoming more and more commonplace these days – just recently, for example, I noticed that rather a lot had been installed in the revamped Sainsbury’s at Team Valley.

As always, it would be interesting to hear your experiences. Have you made use of self-serve checkouts, either in B&Q or elsewhere, and if so what did you think? Is it really quicker and easier than waiting in a regular checkout queue?

Thank you to David Wright for the use of the photograph used in this post, which is © Copyright David Wright and licensed for re-use under the Creative Commons Licence.