Former Woolworths (now HMV), 150 Oxford Street (6 Apr 2011)

While in London last week, High Holborn (store #173) and Tottenham Court Road (#175) weren’t the only two ex-Woolworths I managed to work into my travels.

Back in November, you might recall that I photographed the former Woolworths flagship store (#161) at 311 Oxford Street, below, which opened in 1924 and was sold off in the early 1980s. Since November 2007, the property has housed a 25,000 sq ft ‘global flagship store’ for the Japanese fashion retailer Uniqlo, but it’s had a succession of previous occupants since Woolies’ departure, including Burton, Tesco Metro and (fairly briefly, from 2004) Waterstone’s.

Former Woolworths (now Uniqlo), 311 Oxford Street (24 Nov 2010)

In my blog at the time, I made reference to Woolworths’ second Oxford Street store – #463 – which opened in 1932 and was sold off at the same time as its near-neighbour. At that point, however, I wasn’t clear where the store had been, or what it was now. However, the ever-reliable John Rogers was able to fill in the details, pinpointing the location to 150 Oxford Street and the present-day HMV. So, being in central London, I took the opportunity to check it out.

Former Woolworths (now HMV), 150 Oxford Street (6 Apr 2011)

Situated towards the slightly less glamorous eastern end of Oxford Street, the building is nevertheless rather glorious, and was apparently purpose-built for Woolworths on the site of what had been the Royal Princess’s Theatre, shown in the 1880s print below.

1880s print of Royal Princess's Theatre, Oxford Street

Interestingly, the building to the right of HMV that now houses the upmarket footwear retailer Aldo appears to be the same one as in the drawing above – compare the two and note the upper floor windows with their distinctive pilasters.

Former Woolworths (now HMV), 150 Oxford Street (6 Apr 2011)

Following Woolies’ closure, I understand that the building became a shopping centre, called Oxford Walk, prior to HMV moving in later in the 1980s.

With its symmetry and lovely Art Deco detail by the architects Charles Ernest Elcock and Frederick Sutcliffe, the property retains some of the theatricality of the building that it replaced, and the second and third floor windows – spanning almost the full height and width of the façade – are particularly delightful.

Façade of former Woolworths (now HMV), 150 Oxford Street (6 Apr 2011)

To be honest, the frontage could use some TLC, and hopefully this might be forthcoming as part of the ‘major refurbishment’ that’s planned for the store later this year – assuming, of course, that the increasingly beleaguered HMV manages to last that long. At the end of last year, HMV generated £13.7m from selling its nearby store at 360 Oxford Street to the American fashion retailer Forever 21, and has promised that at least some of this will be reinvested in improvements to other central London stores.

Adam & Eve Court sign at Eastcastle Street end (6 Apr 2011)

While on site, I also managed to locate the back entrance of the old Woolies, mentioned in an earlier Flickr discussion and situated in the appealingly named Adam & Eve Court. From Oxford Street, the Court is accessed via a narrow alleyway between American Apparel and Esprit – a couple of doors along from HMV – and is easy to miss behind the Oxford Street crowds and the clutter of a market stall.

Entrance to Adam & Eve Court, Oxford Street (6 Apr 2011)

In fact, I did miss it at my first attempt, managing instead to locate the Court’s more prominent access from Eastcastle Street, the thoroughfare running parallel to Oxford Street at the back of HMV.

Adam & Eve Court's Eastcastle Street entrance (6 Apr 2011)

Once in the Court, I was able to spot the old rear entrance to Woolworths – still used as HMV’s staff and visitor entrance – as well as a reincarnated version of the Adam & Eve tavern after which the street apparently took its name. The fact that the HMV building must dogleg behind Aldo and American Apparel in order to have an entrance in Adam & Eve Court gives a sense of the property’s extent.

Former Woolworths rear entrance, on left (6 Apr 2011)

For all that Oxford Street is the UK’s busiest shopping thoroughfare, I suspect that not many people have stopped to look up at the decorative detail of the former Woolworths building. I’d imagine, however, that even fewer have ever ventured into Adam & Eve Court – a little oasis of calm from the bustle of Oxford Street, with a splash of Woolies history thrown in.

Original Factory Shop fascia

The rapidly expanding mini-department store retailer, The Original Factory Shop, opened its seventh North East store, in Morpeth, last week. It adds to the retailer’s existing stores within the region at Stanley, Prudhoe, Ashington, Crook, Spennymoor and Shildon.

As noted previously, The Original Factory Shop has been snapping up quite a few former Woolworths branches across the UK – such as the one I visited in Porthmadog, and, closer to home, in Spennymoor.

Established Original Factory Shop store in Stanley (12 Apr 2010)

The Original Factory Shop, Spennymoor (12 March 2010)

However, while Woolies sites are one option, the retailer has a record of being creative in its choice of new store locations. As I blogged last week, Colwyn Bay is set to get an Original Factory Shop in a former pub (with an opening date of 31 August now announced), while the established store in Prudhoe – predating Woolies’ collapse – occupies a former Kwik Save site.

Existing store in Prudhoe (10 Apr 2010)

Meanwhile, the Morpeth location is, as I guessed it would be, the former M&S Simply Food site in the town’s Market Place. I should flag up that Morpeth was not one of the 25 Simply Food stores that was closed down last year due to “underperformance”, such as the shop in Whitley Bay.

Site of the new Morpeth store (10 Jul 2010)

Instead, the Morpeth site became vacant in November 2009 when M&S moved into a full-size store – with both food and fashions – within the new Sanderson Arcade shopping centre. Marks & Spencer had only occupied the Market Place site since 2006, having acquired it (and 27 other locations) from the supermarket Iceland at the point where Simply Food was expanding aggressively, and Iceland was emerging, under new ownership, from a torrid and lossmaking 2004-05.

New M&S in Morpeth's Sanderson Arcade (4 Dec 2009)

In the cyclical way of retail, Iceland returned to Morpeth in 2009 (in the former Woolies store opposite its original location), made a £110m pre-tax profit in the most recent financial year, and has regrown store numbers to 782 – their highest figure to date. Thus, there’s an element of going back to the future in Morpeth once again having a general retailer and Iceland facing each other across Bridge Street.

Summing up from a retail analysis point of view, the opening of The Original Factory Shop in Morpeth is notable on two fronts. First, for Morpeth, it’s great news in bringing a prime site back into use after a fairly short period of vacancy. With Sanderson Arcade having attracted some very strong names to Morpeth for the first time (including Fat Face, Laura Ashley, Paperchase, Crew Clothing and Waterstone’s), and with few voids elsewhere in the town centre, Morpeth seems to be riding the downturn well.

Second, for The Original Factory Shop, it’s interesting that Morpeth represents a location that is both more upmarket and more competitive than the “forgotten high streets” that it has traditionally targeted. It will be interesting to see whether this apparent shift in ambitions signals a push by The Original Factory Shop into other North East market towns, such as Hexham and Alnwick.

Alternatively, if the retailer’s expansion is focused on its more traditional type of location, there are still plenty of opportunities. After all, just in this region there are as yet no branches of The Original Factory Shop anywhere in Teesside, Wearside or Tyneside, meaning that places like Redcar, Seaham or Whitley Bay could yet be on the retailer’s radar.

Grey Street, Newcastle (16 Feb 2010)

Though Shambles in York has understandably garnered much of the attention for being named “Britain’s most picturesque street” in the Google Street View Awards, it’s a pleasure to see Newcastle’s Grey Street coming up in third place – if only for no other reason than giving me an excuse to use some nice nighttime shots that I took three weeks ago. 

Grey Street, Newcastle (16 Feb 2010)

From a retail point of view, Grey Street is something of an also-ran within Newcastle city centre – other than at the Grey’s Monument end, there are relatively few shops along the length of the street, with its mostly Tyneside Classical buildings occupied instead by a succession of banks, restaurants, bars, offices and estate agents. It wasn’t always like that – older readers will still remember when Binns department store (formerly Coxon’s) occupied what is now Earl Grey House (the building on the corner of Grey Street and Market Street that currently houses Costa Coffee), prior to moving into the adjacent former Bainbridge site in 1977.

Grey Street is, however, an undoubtedly beautiful and dramatic piece of townscape, already recognised by Radio 4 listeners, back in 2002, as “Britain’s best street”, and before that by Betjeman for its “descending subtle curve”.  

Grey Street, Newcastle (8 Mar 2010)

Perhaps the most prominent retail property on Grey Street today is that occupied since 2008 by Swedish fashion retailer H&M, supplementing the existing, 35,000 sq ft H&M branch that opened up in part of the former Littlewoods premises in Northumberland Street in 1999 – at the time, the largest H&M store in the UK.

H&M, Grey Street (8 March 2010)

The attractive, Grade II-listed H&M building – designed by William Henry Knowles and Thomas Ridley Milburn – dates from 1904, when the site was redeveloped for Mawson, Swan and Morgan, the “booksellers, stationers, printers and picture frame makers” founded in 1878. 

In 1986, following Mawson, Swan and Morgan’s closure, the premises were taken over by Waterstone’s, who remained there until 2007, closing their store as part of HMV Group’s revitalisation programme. It was something of a surprise that Waterstone’s chose not to retain its own original Newcastle store, but instead the nearby former Dillons store at Emerson Chambers, long ago rebranded following Waterstone’s merger with Dillons in 1999. More curious though is that Waterstone’s ran two stores within barely 100m of each other for quite as long as it did. 

One interesting fact, revealed by the Design, Access and Heritage Statement prepared at the time of H&M’s acquisition of the property’s lease, is the much later (1980s) origin of the ground to first floor staircase compared to the original 1904 staircase linking the ground floor and basement. This reflects the fact that the first floor was originally used as office rather than retail space (the clue being in its plainer mouldings and simpler detail compared to the building’s lower floors), accessed by a staircase elsewhere in the building. However, such is the sensitivity of the 1980s intervention, it’s difficult for an untrained eye to spot the join between the grand staircase’s two flights, despite them being constructed eighty years apart. 

'H&M' logo within window shields... (8 Mar 2010)

If anything, H&M’s takeover of the property allows more of the interior’s original features to be appreciated than was the case when the building was filled with bookcases. Equally, on the exterior, it’s pleasing that H&M has continued the tradition of the building’s occupant displaying its initials in the shields above the display windows of the beautiful Edwardian shopfront; just as Waterstone’s replaced ‘MSM’ with its own ‘W’, so H&M has – for the most part – inserted its familar red ‘H&M’ logo. 

...but not in this one (8 Mar 2010)

I’m always puzzled, however, as to why the shields at either end of the frontage have not had anything put inside them – I know that there are H&M logos on the fascia above instead, but the empty shields always niggle me as a detail that makes the design feel unfinished.

Signage as originally proposed (courtesy of John Cunnington Architects)

Perhaps it’s due to the original plans, above, envisaging internally illuminated hanging signs in those locations – presumably disallowed by the planners – which would have removed the need for either fascia- or shield-based logos on those particular parts of the facade?

Still, it would be nice to finish the job, ensuring that this high quality retail refurbishment can make an even more positive design contribution to the UK’s third most picturesque street.

The empty Oil & Vinegar store this evening (6 Jan 2010)

After work, I trudged through the snow to the delightful Eldon Square Waitrose this evening, though not before giving the store a call to check that it was opening its normal hours. It was, though quite a few shops en route had signs in their windows announcing that they had shut up earlier than usual (a similar picture to elsewhere in the UK, according to Retail Week), including Waterstone’s at the Monument which was citing “staff shortages” due to the weather. The service in Waitrose was, as always, friendly and efficient, alleviating what might otherwise be the stress of negotiating a busy supermarket.

After my Waitrose food shop, I was sad – but not entirely surprised – to notice that the Oil & Vinegar store next door in St George’s Way appears to have closed down. The shutters were down, and the unit looks to have been stripped of both stock and fixtures. I’m not sure how long it’s been gone, but the store was certainly still open when I walked by before Christmas, and is still listed (for now, at least) on the Oil & Vinegar website (below). [Update, 8 Jan 2010: Not sure if it's my influence, but the Newcastle page has now been removed.]

Page for the Newcastle store on the Oil & Vinegar website

It’s a disappointing end for a store that only opened at the end of 2008, and was featured, almost exactly a year ago, as Retail Week’s ‘Store of the Week’. It was, as John Ryan’s review suggests, a really appealing shop, with a rich and interesting instore environment.

However, the problem signs were probably there from the beginning. Regularly walking past on my way to the bus station, it’s fair to say that I’d never seen more a couple of customers in there at any one time – and often there looked to be no-one in the shop at all. Equally, the recent shrinking of the store – moving forward the back wall to reduce its size by about half – started to ring my alarm bells.

So what went wrong? To some extent, I’d suggest that Oil & Vinegar is the kind of shop where people go in, look at the lovely stuff on offer, and leave without buying anything. Certainly, it’s more of a giftware retailer than a place to buy things for yourself, reflected in the Netherlands-based company’s description of itself as a “culinary gift shop”.

On the other hand, Eldon Square’s previous Oil & Vinegar store – a franchise rather than a company-run shop – always seemed to do well. It lasted from 2003 to 2007, and reportedly closed due to supply chain issues, not because of any trading difficulties. (When it shut, I remember there being a notice in the window that suggested it was not the franchisees’ own decision to close down.)

The key difference between the two incarnations, I would argue, is location. The original Oil & Vinegar had a pretty good spot in Earls Way (where Geoff Steven & Son Opticians is now situated), close to the side entrances of both Marks & Spencer and John Lewis, and therefore with plenty of middle-class shoppers passing to and fro. The store, though small, benefited from being wide and shallow, therefore having a much more prominent frontage on the mall than might be expected, given its size.

In contrast, it’s fair to suggest that St George’s Way – the location of the current store - has struggled a little since it opened in February 2008. Two years on, four of the 16 units remain empty, with Argos and Waitrose (both often busy, though rarely thronged) the only major footfall drivers. (Though John Lewis and Boots both have entrances onto St George’s Way, they lead into the lower ground floor levels of those stores; instead, the entrances on the main shopping level above tend to be much more frequently used.)

Most importantly, I think Oil & Vinegar’s particular location within the mall has been problematic – next door to Waitrose but barely visible from its entrance; adjacent to two empty units; only passed by shoppers if they are going to and from the Eldon Square bus station; and deep and narrow in form (so with a limited frontage), rather than shallow and wide. Instead, the layout of St George’s Way and, particularly, the orientation of its escalators seems to makes the opposite stretch, from Waitrose to Old Eldon Square, flow as a busier and more obvious route.

Looking to the future, the Oil & Vinegar website indicates that there are still opportunities to open franchise stores in the UK ^{[broken link removed]}, stating that “following a country re-structure and development strategy Oil & Vinegar UK are looking to grow the UK & Ireland with 8 [stores] in 2009 and 10 in 2010″. If this is so, perhaps we will yet see Newcastle welcome its third – and hopefully lucky – incarnation of an Oil & Vinegar shop.

Borders at Retail World, Gateshead. Photograph courtesy of Land Securities

Mixed fortunes in the news today for two specialist retailers that both have a presence at Team Valley Retail World in Gateshead – HobbyCraft and Borders.

Privately-owned HobbyCraft, which describes itself as “the UK’s largest chain of dedicated arts and crafts superstores”, has reported a 67% leap in full year pre-tax profits, with like-for-like sales over the last 35 weeks rising by 9%. Rather than suffering in the downturn, HobbyCraft has capitalised on Britons’ rediscovered enthusiasm for ‘making their own stuff’, firmly establishing itself as the market leader and expert in its field. Furthermore, with a compact estate of only 38 stores, there’s still plenty of scope for it to grow.

Message from the administrators on the Borders UK website tonight

In contrast, today’s announcement that Borders UK has gone into administration comes as little surprise, after months of speculation about the 45-store bookshop chain’s future. Just as Safeway in the UK was latterly an entirely separate business from the (still going) US chain of the same name, Borders UK no longer has any connection with the US Borders Group, having been sold off to private equity investors Risk Capital Partners in September 2007, and then sold on again, to Valco Capital Partners, in June 2009. Just in the last few days, WHSmith is reported to have pulled out of talks to possibly buy the chain. 

I’ve always enjoyed visiting the Team Valley Borders store – it is clean, spacious, and reasonably well-stocked, and I’ve always been impressed by the smartness and friendliness of the staff. As a retail brand, however, I think Borders in the UK has struggled to define a truly distinctive position – what exactly is it, for example, that makes a Borders store different from a branch of Waterstones or WHSmith, or, indeed, that gives it an advantage over Amazon.co.uk? Beyond the delightful aroma of Starbucks coffee, it’s difficult to think of an answer.

For the sake of the 1,100 staff who tonight are fearing for their jobs – including those at the North East stores in Silverlink and Stockton, as well as Gateshead – it would be excellent news if a buyer for Borders could be found. In reality, though, it’s hard to see any other retailer that would want to buy the entire business as a going concern. After all, it’s already been through three owners in as many years, and even in 2007 had found itself in that awful place where journalists prefix any reference to Borders with the adjective “troubled”.

More likely, sadly, is that WHSmith will cherrypick the best retail park sites, with Waterstone’s perhaps picking up one or two city centre stores; however, there are likely to be few such locations where the HMV Group-owned Waterstone’s isn’t represented already.

Interestingly, it’s exactly a year ago today that Woolworths went into administration; since the demise of Zavvi just a month later, HMV has had the high street music and DVD market virtually to itself. Now, with the possible fall of Borders, its sister company Waterstone’s might well find itself in a similar position of dominance.

At a time of recession, HMV’s resilient performance is to be commended; similarly, Waterstone’s continued presence and growth on the high street, in the face of intense competition from online stores, is surely welcome. Our town and city centres will be poorer, however, if Waterstone’s – having already swallowed Dillons and Ottakar’s in its lifetime – is the only choice of bookshop we have left.

MetroCentre logo on empty unit

I popped over to MetroCentre this afternoon, and spotted a few things that seemed worthy of blogging about.

Millets: Following on from my post last week about Blacks Leisure announcing plans to shut 89 loss-making branches, I noticed that the MetroCentre Millets store is already having a closing down sale. However, the nearby Blacks store looks like it’s safe.

I’m yet to come across a list of the stores being closed (there is nothing, as far as I can see, attached to the official announcement), but I imagine that a good few will be in those locations where Blacks and Millets are competing with each other. To be honest, I’ve always struggled to understand what the difference between the two is supposed to be.

Woolworths: MetroCentre’s vast size – there are 330 stores – means that it has suffered from having a larger than usual number of nationally defunct retailers. Rosebys, Zavvi, The Pier, the Original Shoe Company and, inevitably, Woolworths were among the prominent voids that I spotted today.

Former Woolworths at MetroCentre

Woolworths took over the old two-level C&A unit at MetroCentre in 2000, following that retailer’s decision to move out of the UK. However, there’s no sign as yet of anyone coming in to take Woolworths’ place. I struggle, in fact, to think of a retailer that might want to occupy it. Most of the potential tenants for a unit this size – Bhs, Primark, perhaps New Look – are already represented at MetroCentre, while other possibles, such as Wilkinson, don’t seem to make a habit of opening stores in large regional shopping centres. Any thoughts, anyone?

Waterstone’s: MetroCentre’s Waterstone’s illustrates the point that I made here about retailers not bothering to upgrade certain stores within their estate. Not only does the store’s frontage still feature the old, upper case logo, but its apostrophe appears to have fallen off (credit where it’s due, however, for Waterstone’s including the apostrophe in its name in the first place  – most retailers would have got rid of it long ago).

Inside it’s a similar story, with rather worn carpets and a sad looking store directory – the kind that has certain categories covered up with card, and other ones stuck on afterwards (I spotted a similar design crime in WHSmith). Surely it can’t be that hard to come up with a store directory format that is able to accommodate retailers moving stock around from floor to floor?

On the plus side, the store did have the book I wanted, and the person who served me at the till was friendly and helpful – always one of Waterstone’s strengths, in my view. Still, applying a bit of TLC to the store itself definitely wouldn’t go amiss.

HMV: Over in Waterstone’s sister store, HMV, the shop looked generally better but the customer service was less satisfactory. The first hurdle to buying something was getting around a display bin of blank CDs, pointlessly positioned directly in front of the counter. Second, I didn’t really appreciate the glaring downlighter, set above the counter, that was seemingly designed to blind (and cook) any customer that approached. Third – and most irritatingly – the person who served me spent the entire duration of the transaction continuing her conversation with a colleague, despite my best efforts to engage in friendly eye contact.

This habit of taking the customer’s money but otherwise ignoring them is one of my biggest pet hates when shopping, and HMV is by no means the only culprit. I did, at least, get a “see you later” – however, if that’s the level of customer service I can expect, seeing me later is probably unlikely.