Outdoor zone, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

If the people of Newcastle were still unaware of Clas Ohlson this morning they shouldn’t be by the end of the day. Adding to the billboards and posters that I mentioned a fortnight ago, the Swedish ”modern hardware” retailer’s latest marketing push has included leafletters in Northumberland Street, adverts on the local radio, and even a wraparound on this morning’s edition of the Metro free paper.

The new store opens its doors at 10am tomorrow (Wednesday 24 August), but I was allowed in for a sneak preview this morning to see what shoppers can expect from the North East’s first Clas Ohlson shop.

Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Externally, as I’ve noted before, the narrow street frontage that provides lift and escalator access to the basement store makes it harder than usual to draw people in. However, Clas Ohlson has made the best use of the limited space available by creating an eyecatching portal in its corporate blue. Next to the more subdued shopfront of its neighbour H&M, and against the backdrop of a generally dreary building, the bright new frontage is hard to miss.

Display window, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Once inside, display windows have been slotted in on either side of the entrance lobby. Though not very deep, they are an effective way of ensuring that customers get a taste of Clas Ohlson’s product range even before they descend to the store proper, and help to counter the lack of any display frontage onto the street.

Escalator, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

The escalator and lift that whisk customers down to the shopfloor are the only features that remain from the old Collectables store, and the extent of the transformation becomes clear as shoppers emerge downstairs. Essentially, the new store is unrecognisable from the one that it replaced.

Descending the escalator, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

The layout and appearance of the store will be broadly familiar to anyone who’s visited one of Clas Ohlson’s other shops, such as those in Leeds or Kingston-upon-Thames. Shoppers are greeted by a display table featuring key offers, set against a backdrop of navigational signage and a diagrammatical plan of the store.

Store plan, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

A wall featuring the covers of previous Clas Ohlson catalogues is also a nice touch, and a visually bold way of celebrating the retailer’s long heritage – something that has been a key message within the Newcastle store’s marketing campaign. The launch of the latest catalogue, incidentally, has been brought forward a day to coincide with the opening of the Newcastle store.

Catalogues wall, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

The bold and fun use of graphics extends throughout the shop. Blown-up images of Clas Ohlson products are used both as a visual aid, to help customers navigate the store, and as a more decorative device to greet customers – and to remind them what Clas Ohlson is all about – as they exit the lift.

Lift area, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

With the cash desks located to the left of the entrance area, the natural route into the store is to the right, beginning with the ‘Home’ department before moving on through ‘Electrical’, ‘Hardware’, ‘Multimedia’ and finally ‘Leisure’.

Kitchen products, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Lighting products, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Rather like fellow Swedish retailer Ikea, Clas Ohlson likes to guide customers on a particular journey through the store, though frequent cut-throughs – more obvious than those in Ikea – make it easy to break away from the defined route.

Outdoor products, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

As in other Clas Ohlson stores, the distinctive feel of the store design – vaguely industrial, yet sleek and modern – creates a simple backdrop that allows the products to really stand out. The retailer’s Scandinavian origins are evident in the elegant presentation throughout, as is its quirkiness and sense of humour. Inventive, fun and colourful ways of displaying product help to make even the most unglamorous items catch the eye.

Nails, screws and fixings, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Stationery, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Headphones, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Some parts of the store also feature display innovations that are unique to the Newcastle store. The extensive light bulb section, for example, allows shoppers to see the size, colour and brightness of the bulbs on offer, while shelves suspended from the ceiling provide an effective platform for showing off colourful products such as radios.

Light bulbs, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Radios, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

As you may have spotted in the shots above, each small section of the Clas Ohlson store has a unique number ID, rather like in the Ikea warehouse. Computer terminals throughout the store allow customers to search the store’s 10,000-strong product range by keyword or item number, and to then print off a list showing the exact location of all those products instore.

Search terminal, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

Once Clas Ohlson’s promised transactional website launches in early 2012, I suspect that the terminals will form part of the multichannel shopping experience, for example in allowing customers to browse instore and to then order products for home delivery.

Checkouts, Clas Ohlson, Newcastle (23 Aug 2011)

The checkouts and customer service desk, finally, occupy the area at the side of the lift and escalator – a logical use of an awkward-shaped area, and convenient for customers being able to exit the store again.

So, overall, it’s hard not to be impressed by what Clas Ohlson has done with the space, turning it into a store that feels large, bright, modern and fun – and that’s packed, of course, with useful stuff, much of it usually found out of town rather than on the high street.

With the pre-opening marketing blitz nearly done, and the final preparations being made to the store ahead of tomorrow’s opening, all that now remains is for Newcastle shoppers to take the new arrival to their hearts. As the only Clas Ohlson store to open in the UK this year, and with short-term expansion plans scaled back, the chain’s bosses will no doubt be keeping a close eye on its performance.

Habitat, Bristol (22 Feb 2011)

It’s hard to dispute that the last couple of weeks has been a torrid time for the UK high street, with a succession of well-known names either announcing bad news or collapsing into administration.

While HMV has a stay of execution for now, other retailers in that section of the alphabet – Habitat, HomeForm, Haldanes and TJ Hughes – have teetered, joined by others such as the clothing chains Jane Norman and Life & Style.

Thorntons, Bishop Auckland (24 Jan 2011)

Comet and Thorntons, meanwhile, look set to follow Mothercare’s recent lead in radically slimming down their UK store estates. When Thorntons becomes the most popular trending topic on Twitter, as it was earlier this week, you really know that the high street’s travails have entered mainstream discussion.

So, what are the key headlines from, arguably, the most intense period of bad retail news since a flurry of retailers – among them Woolworths, Zavvi, Whittard’s and Adams – all collapsed in the final weeks of 2008?

Habitat's Tottenham Court Road flagship - which is staying open (6 Apr 2011)

• The iconic furniture brand Habitat, and three of its central London stores, have been bought by Home Retail Group, owner of Argos and Homebase, for £24.5m. However, the remaining 30 UK stores are in administration and threatened with closure, with 750 jobs at risk. Harrogate, Edinburgh and York are among the locations affected, but there have been no Habitat stores in the North East since the Eldon Square branch in Newcastle closed in the late 1980s.

• HomeForm, the private equity-owned home improvement business that owns brands such as Moben, Kitchens Direct and Dolphin filed for administration on 23 June, putting 160 showrooms and 2,800 jobs in danger. Locations in the North East include Darlington, Gateshead, Middlesbrough, Newcastle and Sunderland.

• TJ Hughes, the Liverpool-based discount department store chain, collapsed into administration on Thursday morning, two days after announcing that it was planning to appoint administrators. The chain has 57 stores, which employ 4,000 people and account for almost 2 million square feet of retail floorspace – slightly more than the entire sales area of Metrocentre. TJ Hughes stores in Newcastle, Sunderland and Middlesbrough are among those at risk.

• Young fashion chain Jane Norman collapsed into administration earlier this week. On Tuesday, it was announced that Edinburgh Woollen Mill had bought 33 of the 94 shops, saving nearly 400 jobs, with a possibility of buying 28 more stores. However, the remaining 33 sites will close – including the branch in Newcastle’s Eldon Square – and the future of Jane Norman’s 82 department store concessions is uncertain.

• Clothing and homewares chain Life & Style – the rebadged Ethel Austin – collapsed into administration for the third time in as many years last month. 22 of the rump business’s 90 stores are already closing, with 274 staff losing their jobs.

• A week ago, Kesa-owned electricals chain Comet reported a 6.8% fall in sales compared to a year before, and annnounced plans to close 17 stores and downsize 9 others.

• On Tuesday, chocolatier Thorntons revealed that it would close up to 180 shops over the next three years, accounting for almost half of its entire company-owned store estate. The additional 227 franchisee-owned stores are not affected.

All these stories are worthy of a discussion in their own right – and will more than likely crop up again in future blog posts – but, looked at as a whole, what do they tell us about the condition of UK retail right now?

TJ Hughes, Sunderland (7 Sep 2009)

Whenever a familar high street name is in danger, it’s easy to wheel out all the usual arguments about the effects of online shopping, supermarkets’ assault into non-food, and the bane of quarterly rent payments or upward-only rent reviews.

Squeezed consumer spending is clearly also a huge issue at present. The sectors that Comet and HomeForm inhsbit – electricals and home improvement – are both among the most challenging places to be right now, as demonstrated by difficult trading at Dixons, Best Buy’s struggle to make an impression in the UK, and the recent collapse of Focus DIY.

Focus, Consett (4 Jun 2011)

Without a doubt, these economic or market factors have all contributed to the recent bad news, but they don’t explain why some retailers are collapsing when plenty of others are, if not exactly thriving, at least weathering the economic storm. The John Lewis Partnership, for example, today published its healthiest weekly sales figures for some time, with the Delia effect at Waitrose and the launch of the John Lewis Clearance pushing up turnover by 12.5% compared to a year ago.

Just as John Lewis can usually be relied upon to deliver good news, it’s very rarely a complete surprise when a particular retailer goes under. Look at this week’s casualties, and you’ll see that most of them share one or more of the same attributes:

• Lack of clarity regarding the brand or proposition
• A perception of being a ‘legacy’ retailer
• Stronger competitors within their sector
• A reputation simply for being cheap, rather than offering value
• Instability and a lack of strategic direction through constant changes in ownership or management.

Habitat fascia, York (17 Jul 2010)

In its heyday in the 1960s and 70s, Habitat, for example, was truly a design and retail innovator. However, squeezed between Ikea at the value end and Heal’s and John Lewis at the top end, Habitat has since struggled to define its niche. Meanwhile, a shrinking store estate over the years – 33 now, from a recent peak of 42 – has reinforced the impression of a business in decline.

Closed-down Habitat, Birmingham (18 Mar 2010)

Jane Norman, too, has seemingly lost sight of the reasons that made it successful in the first place, with my female friends bemoaning what they see as its move downmarket – a dangerous shift, that brings it into more direct competition with bigger, and cheaper, chains such as Primark, Peacocks and New Look.

Those big names in the clothing sector have also caused difficulties for TJ Hughes and Life & Style – raising their fashion credentials in order to offer customers all-round value, and leaving behind those retailers that have sought to compete primarily on price. Add in Life & Style’s record of previous collapses (as Ethel Austin), and the fact that TJ Hughes has had four owners in the last decade, and there’s little wonder that both have become distracted from what needs to be their core focus – being top-notch retailers.

In Thorntons’ case, many of its difficulties seem self-inflicted, throwing away the upmarket cachet of its brand by spreading itself too thinly. Creating a bloated estate of 600 shops would be unwise enough, particularly when quite a lot of them offer uninspring store environments in unglamorous locations. However, letting your product be sold in supermarkets and Wilkinson was always likely to be a disaster – undermining your brand’s reputation for quality while simultaneously removing the need for shoppers to visit your own stores.

What does all this mean, looking forward? Well, those retail businesses that simply aren’t up to scratch in terms of proposition, brand, strategy or customer experience will need to up their game in order to survive. However, there’s no reason why those businesses that are well-run and have a clear reason to exist shouldn’t continue to prosper.

Image by Zoran

I was quite chuffed, this morning, to have a short article on web usability published in The Journal. Much of what I wrote is, or at least should be, common sense: essentially, the need to understand what information your customers are looking for, and to give it to them in a way that is clear and engaging. Though the examples I used in the article related to tourism websites, the same principles apply across the board, including to retailers.

To be fair, many of those retailers with ecommerce sites have become increasingly adept at offering an easy and stress-free user experience. On the pure etail side, for example, Play.com’s clean, uncluttered interface makes it a pleasure to use – sometimes, it has to be said, more so than the increasingly complex Amazon.co.uk. Similarly, in more niche markets, many of the sites submitted to my Home Interiors Directory and Garden & Landscape Directory manage to combine a user-friendly online shop with a quirky and distinctive tone of voice.

Among those retailers that straddle both bricks and clicks, JohnLewis.com is particularly effective at conveying those brand values of space, quality and attention to detail that are similarly prominent within its stores. In contrast, I tend to find the Ikea website confusing to use, and normally end up heading to the physical store at MetroCentre instead.

Generally, though, I often find that it’s those retailers with simpler sites – providing basic information about the business, rather than e-commerce functionality – that would benefit most from an online revamp. So, using the example of department stores, how about some candidates for those retailers that I think are most or least effective at managing their basic online presence?

Fenwick website

One retailer whose website has always disappointed me is Newcastle-based chain Fenwick. Though the site’s content has been beefed up of late, and now provides core information about the company and its stores, its imagery and overall appearance is somehow cold and aloof; certainly, there’s no sense of the retail theatre that you get when paying a visit to its Newcastle flagship.

Williams & Griffin website

In contrast, the website for Williams & Griffin – a department store that Fenwick acquired in 2008 - conveys a much warmer and more engaging feel through its purple palette and use of colour photographs. Coverage of individual departments within the store is also more comprehensive than on its parent company’s site. Instead, Willie Gee’s main oversight is failing to tell us, anywhere on its home page or ‘about us’ section, where the store actually is. Thankfully, the ‘contact us’ page reveals that we can find Williams & Griffin in Colchester.

Bentalls website

Over to another Fenwick acquisition – this time Bentalls, in Kingston-upon-Thames and Bracknell – and yet another different set of brand imagery. The layout and content of the site is functional, but the overall look is cheaper and less slick than you might expect for a quality department store brand. Generic smiling women stock photos, an unreadable scrolling ticker, and – worst of all – an @btconnect.com email address (should you fancy the advertised cookery classes) all convey a less than professional image. Equally, the ‘copyright 2006′ tag and lack of any news stories give the impression of a site that is not lovingly maintained.

Beales website

If the Bentalls site conveys an image that seems at odds with its brand, Beales’ problem is that its site struggles to convey much of a personality at all. The home page is dominated – overwhelmed, even – by an enormous offers banner, yet the site gives only a limited feel for what it’s like to shop at a Beales store. Even the ‘about us’ page links to a ‘corporate statement’, its talk about ‘entry price points’, ‘trading policy’ and ‘assortments’ squarely aimed at shareholders rather than customers. Shoppers are unlikely to be wooed by the revelation that “value, at all levels of the market, plays an increasingly important part for our customers [sic] shopping basket”.

Encouragingly, we are promised a ‘new website’, ‘coming soon’ in autumn 2009; there’s even a countdown timer, helpfully informing us that the ’time until launch’ is ’34 days, 2 hours, 10 minutes and 26 seconds’. That’s undoubtedly good news, but it’s always a risky ploy to make such a big deal of an upcoming website revamp – not only are you building customers’ expectations about what they can expect in 34 days’ time (which is fine, assuming that the new site meets or exceeds those expectations), but you’re also effectively saying to shoppers that “we realise our current site isn’t very good”.

Lewis's website

One site that is too new to require a Beales-style makeover is that for the iconic Liverpool-based department store Lewis’s.  The Lewis’s site is largely effective, speaking with a distinctly local voice that successfully conveys the retailer’s independence and uniqueness. The site also celebrates the store’s heritage – with historic photos, and visitors invited to ‘submit their memories’ – at the same time as providing plenty of information about current and planned developments. If you were to pick fault, you might argue that the site sometimes has too much going on – for example, it might benefit from a little more white space, and less content disappearing off ‘below the fold’.

Rutherford & Co website

After so many niggles, we should probably end on a more positive note. One site that I particularly like is that for Rutherford & Co, an independent, family-owned department (or ‘lifestyle’) store based in Morpeth, in Northumberland. Where the Fenwick site fails to do the physical store justice, Rutherford & Co has packed its site with beautiful photographs that effectively convey the rich and quirky instore experience. “Welcome to the sumptuous world of Rutherfords”, the site’s home page declares, and – for once – it really does deliver on its promise.

Thank you to Zoran for making available the image used at the top of this post.