Poundland, Hexham (19 Nov 2011)

Poundland opened the doors of its new Hexham store last Thursday (17 November) – and I understand that another Northumberland Poundland will be opening in Ashington soon.

The new Hexham store was having a ‘family fun day’ when I visited on Saturday, with the result that every child in Hexham town centre seemed to be carrying a Poundland balloon.

Looking beyond the initial razzmattazz, I suspect that the store will still do very well. It’s very visible, carries a good range in a decent-sized space, and lacks much in the way of competition. Though Hexham has a well-stocked but careworn Poundstretcher, the town is relatively unusual for the North East in having neither Wilkinson nor Home Bargains.

Poundland, Hexham (19 Nov 2011)

Meanwhile, having only had one Northumberland store (in Cramlington) prior to Hexham’s opening last week, Poundland is set to quickly add a third. I understand that the retailer has taken over the old Ethel Austin premises in Ashington, with contractors already on site and jobs being advertised. Given the quick turnaround in Hexham, we can surely expect the Ashington store to be opening well before Christmas.

Coming hot on the heels of recent new stores in Peterlee (in the former Woolworths – which I obviously need to visit!), Bishop Auckland (another ex-Ethel Austin) and Durham’s Arnison Retail Centre (previously Bensons for Beds and Ponden Home), Poundland’s expansion in the North East certainly shows no sign of letting up just yet.

With a UK store count now at more than 360 and rising, Poundland’s estate has increased by an astonishing 200 shops in the last three years. However, there must surely become a point – in just a few years’ time at the current rate of expansion – where Poundland has stores in almost all the places where it wants them.

Little wonder then that Poundland has recently launched a new fascia, Dealz, that it can potentially roll out across the eurozone, starting in Ireland. It’s a canny move that should ensure Poundland’s continued expansion, even once its domestic market is saturated.

Soon-to-open Superdry, Durham (16 Nov 2011)

Superdry – the SuperGroup-owned fashion chain of the moment – is gearing up to open its new store in Durham’s Silver Street at 9am this coming Friday (18 November), though the shop was still under wraps when I went past this morning.

By opening in the midst of the Durham Lumiere festival – which runs from 17-20 November, and attracts large crowds to the city – Superdry should be well placed for a successful launch.

Until recently, the unit at  30-31 Silver Street was occupied by Burton and Dorothy Perkins. However, in keeping with Sir Philip Green’s property consolidation strategy for Arcadia Group, both brand’s ranges now feature instead in the city’s nearby BHS store, the anchor tenant for the Prince Bishops shopping centre.

Soon-to-open Superdry, Durham (16 Nov 2011)

While Arcadia shrinks its estate, Superdry is rapidly expanding it – and since the first Superdry store opened in 2004, the chain’s growth has been spectacular. Durham will be the 57th standalone Superdry store in the UK – and only its third in the North East, after Newcastle and Metrocentre – alongside 21 shops under the Cult brand and more than 40 concessions in House of Fraser, Harrods and Selfridges department stores.

Cult store in Oxford (11 Nov 2011)

The Superdry estate has also grown rapidly overseas, and currently comprises more than 100 stores across Venezuela, the USA, Taiwan, Spain, South Korea, Panama, the Netherlands, Luxembourg, Italy, Indonesia, Germany, France, Finland, Denmark, Belgium, Austria and Australia. The Superdry website has also become a major sales channel, buoyed by its free delivery offer within the UK, Europe and North America.

Not surprisingly, this expansion has fuelled rapid growth both in group sales – up 42% in the three months to 30 October, following the 66% increase recorded in the previous quarter – and in profit (£47.3m pre-tax profit in the year to 1 May 2011). However, an absence of like-for-like comparisons makes it difficult to discern how sales are holding up in established stores, and the extent of any cannibalisation by newly opened shops.

Commentators’ questioning of how long SuperGroup can sustain such growth – alongside recent distribution difficulties (now apparently resolved) and a sense that the Superdry brand may be becoming overexposed – makes it one of the most fascinating retailers to follow right now, and is reflected in the business’s fluctuating share price. In March 2010, SuperGroup successfully floated on the London Stock Exchange, with the company’s share price subsequently rocketing from its initial £5 to a peak of more than £18 in February this year. However, the share price has since fallen back to just over £6.

Nevertheless, for all those question marks, Superdry’s development of good-looking stores on the high street in the midst of an economic downturn is both impressive and welcome. Presumably due to its student-heavy population, Durham has done well to secure a standalone Superdry store ahead of the larger North East retail centres of Sunderland, Middlesbrough and Darlington, and the chances are that it will be a success. However, time will tell how much further Superdry can grow – in our region, the UK, and overseas – before it starts to see increasingly diminishing returns.

Former Woolworths in Houghton-le-Spring

Though I can’t claim to make a habit of visiting six old Woolies stores in the same day (including Houghton-le-Spring, above), I have managed to build up a pretty good collection of former Woolworths pics over the last year or so – snapping them as I spot them, and, it must be admitted, making the occasional detour expressly to get another one.

I figured that it was therefore time to bring together all the photos of old Woolies that haven’t featured in Soult’s Retail View already, together with some of the ones that we’ve seen before. As you would expect it’s certainly an interesting mix, with some success stories but also plenty of properties that remain unoccupied nine months after Woolies’ demise.

Woolworths, Whitley Bay (26 Dec 2008)

To kick off, this photo of the store in Whitley Bay was taken on Boxing Day last year, a few days prior to closure. Sadly, I understand that the store is still empty, with little sign of anything happening. On the plus side, nothing seems to have come of the suggestion, from no less than the (now former) Elected Mayor, that the building should be turned into a new library; if Whitley Bay is to have any future as a retail centre, taking the town’s largest and most prominent shop unit out of retail use surely seems like a crazy idea.

Back in March I emailed the northern variety store retailer Boyes to suggest that Whitley Bay would be a perfect location for one of its shops. Whitley Bay, I argued, needed “a store like yours that sells a wide range of products at reasonable prices” – in my view, it’s this type of useful, everyday retailer that is most likely to get shoppers popping back into the town centre on a regular basis. Anyone who’s ever visited a Boyes store will appreciate that it’s the epitome of this kind of shop – truly a treasure trove of handy stuff such as homewares, toys, stationery, toiletries and clothing.

To Boyes’ great credit, I promptly got a personal email back from no less a figure than the company’s chairman, Andrew Boyes, confirming that the retailer was “interested in expansion into the [Tyne and Wear] area” and was “looking at opportunities”. So, though nothing has happened yet, the door for Boyes to pick up some old Woolies seemingly remains ajar.

Still in December last year, being in Chesterfield for my cousin’s wedding presented me with an opportunity to tick off another old Woolies that had closed down just three days earlier, in the town’s Vicar Lane Shopping Centre. Despite being a good-looking and well-located unit, the Vicar Lane store guide indicates that this store too remains empty almost ten months on.

Former Woolworths, Chesterfield (30 Dec 2008)

Moving north of the border, another vacant unit is the store in Perth, captured not long after closure in February. As far as I can gather, however, this store also remains unoccupied.

Former Woolworths, Perth (23 Feb 2009)

Some good news now, and the old Woolworths in Hexham, in Northumberland – one of the very first tranche of 51 Woolies stores to be acquired by Iceland, back in January. This shot was taken in August, a couple of weeks before the store opened.

Former Woolworths, Hexham (8 Aug 2009)

Iceland acquired another Northumberland store, in Morpeth, at the same time. This photo was also taken in August, with the supermarket already trading. To Iceland’s credit, it has done a good job in both Hexham and Morpeth of sprucing up two properties that were looking in need of some TLC while in Woolworths’ care.

Former Woolworths, Morpeth (15 Aug 2009)

I’ve already written, in some depth, about my recent visit to Durham. As I noted then, the new Tesco Metro in the former Market Place Woolworths seems to be nicely mopping up those city centre shoppers left adrift by last year’s departure of Waitrose.

Former Woolworths, Durham (11 Sep 2009)

There’s no need to repeat the photos that you’ve already seen of former Woolworths in Redcar, Middlesbrough, Stockton-on-Tees, Hartlepool and Gateshead – all taken on 17 September – or the shot I used last week of the empty MetroCentre branch.

So let’s end, for the moment, with this shot of the recently opened Home Bargains in Tamworth, Staffordshire.

Former Woolworths, Tamworth (19 Sep 2009)

Tamworth and I go back a long way – it’s the place where I went to school, and is somewhere I still visit from time to time. So, I was pleased to see that Home Bargains had done such a good job of turning the slightly tired Woolworths premises in George Street into a really bright and modern store. Indeed, Home Bargains’ comprehensive refit of the unit, including a smart new shopfront, has successfully avoided the problem of the building still feeling like an old Woolworths (cf. Redcar or Middlesbrough).

It was also the first time I’d seen a tweaked Home Bargains fascia – in burgundy and grey, instead of the more garish red and bright blue – but it does work well in conveying a slightly more quality image for the retailer, as well as being more in keeping with the overall look of the street.

That’s all for now – but you can look forward to part 2 in due course which will feature a selection of Welsh former Woolworths stores – Holyhead, Porthmadog, Prestatyn, Rhyl, Colwyn Bay and Llandudno – as well as a few more local ones in Byker, Gosforth, Newcastle and Consett.

Time for a lie down, I think.

Waitrose fascia

In recent weeks, hardly a day has gone by without some good news involving Waitrose – if it isn’t stellar sales figures, it’s been news about stocking 100% British own-brand dairy products, snapping up Duchy Originals, selling its products in Boots, expanding its presence in motorway service areas, or planning to ramp up its move into convenience.

Meanwhile, the retailer continues to grow its store portfolio at a rapid rate – now up to 215 shops, including new stores in Winchester, Colchester and Weston-super-Mare within the last six weeks alone.

By and large, the recent Waitrose story has therefore been one of growth and success, with the retailer – and, indeed, the John Lewis Partnership as a whole – very much in the habit of opening stores, rather than closing them.

The Gates Shopping Centre in Durham

Against this backdrop, I’ve always been rather curious about quite what went wrong with Waitrose’s Durham branch, in The Gates shopping centre. A former Safeway store, the 18,000 sq ft branch was acquired following Safeway’s takeover by Morrisons; though considered too small at the time for conversion to the Morrisons format, it was not one of the 53 or so overlapping stores that the Competition Commission had required Morrisons to divest. Rather, the assumption was that it was a location that Waitrose actively wanted.

The Durham store opened as Waitrose, to much fanfare, in November 2005 – not surprising, given that it was the retailer’s first presence in North East England, and at the time its most northerly store in the UK. Barely two years later, however, in January 2008, the store’s closure was announced after it had continually “traded at a loss”.

Echoing Waitrose’s closure of another former Morrisons acquisition, in Southport, in 2006 – just two years after it had opened – the announcement demonstrated how the retailer was capable of decisive action in those rare situations where a store was unsuccessful. However, Waitrose’s thriving store in Hexham – another former Safeway, bought from Morrisons and opened in November 2006 – showed that there was nothing stopping the retailer from making a go of it in the North East.

Waitrose Durham finally closed its doors in August last year, designed to coincide with the opening of a new (but much smaller) store in the Eldon Square shopping centre, in nearby Newcastle. More recently, in May this year, a third North East Waitrose opened in Ponteland, taking the place of the village’s Somerfield (itself a former Safeway). For a Waitrose fan like me, the retailer’s shift northwards is undoubtedly welcome; after all, prior to 2004 there was no Waitrose store more northerly than Newark.

Embarrassingly, until a few weeks ago, I had never paid a proper, sightseeing visit to Durham. So I determined to set out, curious to take a look at the former Waitrose site and to see what had become of it. That sums me up, you see – most people visit Durham to take in the wonderful cathedral; my first stop was a shut-up supermarket.

Wandering from the bus station along North Road and into the The Gates shopping centre, my initial reaction was one of slight bemusement. To me, this end of town felt very much like a secondary pitch, with The Gates’ roster of tenants – Poundland, The X Catalogue Store, Yorkshire Trading Co. – as well as those in nearby streets, not appearing to be the most natural bedfellows for a Waitrose.

Former Waitrose store, Durham (September 2009)

On a Friday towards noon, The Gates was also eerily quiet – so much so that I was able to overtly take a photo of the old Waitrose store (above) without anyone noticing. It was a rather sad sight, really - the store’s frontage was partly obscured by a deserted carousel and stacks of plastic crates (presumably belonging to the adjacent Yorkshire Trading Co.), but no amount of hiding could disguise the fact that this was a very large and very empty unit.

Durham's Prince Bishops shopping centre

My initial reaction was reinforced once I’d crossed over the river, taking the Millburngate Bridge towards Durham’s Market Place and the newer Prince Bishops shopping centre. Where The Gates felt peripheral, the Market Place area – buoyed by the presence of big names such as Bhs, Next, Marks and Spencer and Topshop, as well as lots of street entertainment – felt very much like the heart of the city centre. The area was buzzing and full of people, including plenty of students and visitors.

Durham Market Place

Tellingly, I noted that a Tesco Metro had opened up in the city’s former Woolworths store. You might well wonder, as I did, why Tesco hadn’t simply taken over the Waitrose site instead – essentially, I suspect that it’s because the old Woolworths site is a much busier and more attractive location than that on the other side of the river. Ironically, the old Woolies would probably have been a really good place for a Waitrose too.

Framwellgate Bridge, linking The Gates (behind) to Silver Street and the Market Place

Overall, following my visit to Durham, it seemed pretty clear to me why the Waitrose store had not been the hoped-for success – in short, because of where it was. Situated among the wrong types of shops, on the wrong side of the river, at the wrong end of town, away from the tourist and student hotspots, everything about the location in The Gates just felt wrong. I kept thinking to myself, did Waitrose actually visit this site before signing up for it?

In the right place, I think a Waitrose in Durham could have been successful; after all, other newer stores in the north of England and beyond, such as the ones in Sheffield and Edinburgh, appear to do very well with students and locals alike. As it is, Waitrose’s abortive dalliance with Durham is probably best viewed as a rare, but interesting, blip in the retailer’s recent success story.