Typical Card Factory fascia

Newcastle City Council has recently received a planning application for the “display of internally illuminated fascia sign and non illuminated projecting sign to front elevation” for 55-57 Northumberland Street. The applicant, I understand, is the rapidly expanding greetings card chain Card Factory.

As far as I can tell, no retailer name is mentioned anywhere in the planning application, but a little bit of detective work soon reveals the ‘Applicant Address’ as Card Factory’s head office in Wakefield, and the ‘Applicant Name’ as the firm’s Property Administrator.

Only established in 1997, Card Factory has been one of the quiet retail successes of recent years. Following a combination of organic growth and acquisitions, the business has expanded to 490 stores nationwide, making it the second largest UK greetings card retailer after Clinton Cards.

Clinton Cards store in South Shields (18 Jun 2010)

Of the two, however, Card Factory has enjoyed the recent momentum, delivering year-on-year sales growth of 27% in 2009, and a £29.4m pre-tax profit on a turnover of nearly £168m. Clinton, in contrast, had to turn over £345m – double that of Card Factory – in order to generate a similar pre-tax profit (£24.1m). Just this April, Card Factory’s founders, Dean and Janet Hoyle, enjoyed a “multi-million pound windfall” after selling a £350m majority stake in the company to the London-based private equity firm Charterhouse.

Card Factory's South Shields store (18 Jun 2010)

Card Factory has already become an established presence in the North East, with Tyneside alone having branches in Gateshead, Blaydon, Wallsend, Jarrow, North Shields, South Shields and Whitley Bay. However, Northumberland Street will be the retailer’s first foray into Newcastle, and is certainly a bold choice for a chain that tends to be associated with the value end of the greetings card market.

Site of new Card Factory store in Newcastle (17 Jun 2010)

55-57 Northumberland Street, let’s not forget, is very much at the heart of what has traditionally been Newcastle’s prime retail pitch, sat between the Fenwick department store and the main Eldon Way entrance to Eldon Square. Previously Foot Locker, the unit became vacant as part of the reshuffle of Newcastle city centre retailers that has followed the opening of Eldon Square South. Republic, you’ll recall, kicked things off by moving from its previous store in Douglas Way to a new flagship in St Andrew’s Way, paving the way for Foot Locker to move into the more fashion-focused pitch freed up by Republic.

Northumberland Street entrance to Eldon Square (17 Jun 2010)

I like Card Factory – the prices are reasonable, and the quality and range excellent – and I certainly prefer its lively, unpretentious stores over the strangely soulless experience that I tend to find at Clinton’s. However, news of Card Factory’s planned Newcastle store does reinforce what seems to be Northumberland Street’s shift towards the value end of retail, coming hot on the heels of the new Peacocks store.

Peacocks, Monument Mall, Newcastle (11 Jun 2010)

To some extent, of course, this is merely a reflection of those retailers that are currently doing well and looking to expand. On the other hand, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to imagine top-end names opening up on Northumberland Street. When toy retailer Hamleys had its ill-fated foray into the provinces in the 1980s, it seemed natural for its Newcastle store to open up in Northumberland Street (in the premises now occupied by HMV). If it were doing the same today, you’d have to imagine it heading straight for St Andrew’s Way, and a berth among Apple Store, Guess, Hollister and All Saints.

The tide could yet, of course, shift back in Northumberland Street’s favour. The JD-owned branded fashion chain Bank is set to open in the nearby Priceless Shoes unit, and will surely be an improvement on the increasingly unappealing and tacky-looking store that’s there now. 

Next, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (5 Feb 2010)

The big test, however, will be on what occupies the unit that Next will leave empty when it moves into its new Eldon Square flagship. Received wisdom seems to be that the site represents the perfect opportunity for Zara to make a return to Northumberland Street, after its short-lived stint – in a unit that was too small for it – a few years ago.

In my view, Zara’s the kind of midmarket but well regarded retailer that Northumberland Street needs to attract if its to hang on to its status as Newcastle’s premier shopping thoroughfare. With Next due to move out early in 2011, it may not be very long before we know the answer.

Next, Northumberland Street, Newcastle (5 Feb 2010)

Following the apparent confirmation of earlier rumours about Next planning to open a new store in Newcastle’s Eldon Square shopping centre next year, it seems timely to take a look at the retailer’s current Northumberland Street premises, shown above.

It’s quite a handsome building when you stand back and look at it – particularly in comparison to the brutish, blank, brown brick facades of the Primark (formerly C&A) and Bhs building next door. Imagine then how things might look if a building in the style of Next’s premises wrapped all the way round the corner into Northumberland Road, in place of the existing Bhs/Primark block… something like the view below, perhaps?

Old postcard of Bhs site, Northumberland Street, Newcastle

Perhaps I should have known already, but before getting a copy of the fascinating new Newcastle Through Time book for Christmas, I hadn’t a clue that today’s Next building is a retained fragment of the building above - the remainder of which was demolished in the early 1970s to make way for more modern premises for the then ‘British Home Stores’ and C&A. I’m none the wiser, however, about which retailer was occupying the Next site at that time, or indeed what the reason was for retaining those three last bays. Perhaps someone out there can shed some light on the matter?

The same view today

One thing I do know is that the story has a neat, if slightly tenuous, link to a building mentioned briefly in one of my first blog posts – Murton House, in Grainger Street. Having housed the Henry A Murton department store from about 1910 until its takeover by the Co-op in 1957, the Co-op made substantial changes to the interior in the 1960s, before moving out of the premises in 1971. Conveniently, C&A was able to take the property over after only a short period of vacancy, occupying the building until 1973 while its regular premises in Northumberland Street were demolished and rebuilt.

Similarly, British Home Stores apparently moved to Pilgrim Street during the redevelopment of the site – again, answers on a postcard if you have any information on where exactly that was.

Existing Topshop, Newcastle

Back in the present, we do now know a little more, courtesy of The Journal, about the proposed new Next store in Eldon Square. It will:

• Reportedly be “one of the largest branches of Next in the country”
• Supposedly replace, rather than supplement, Next’s existing Northumberland Street store (handily freeing up a prominent unit for somebody else – perhaps Zara?)
• Take over a small amount of space occupied by Eldon Leisure in order to create space for a “flagship store”.

The fact that Next will be nibbling into Eldon Leisure seems to reinforce the view that its intended location must be the current Arcadia Group space, presumably incorporating three floors - the street and mall levels (current Topshop), and the floor accessed by escalators from the mall that currently houses Topman (and, if I understand correctly, the adjacent bit of Eldon Leisure).

This space equates to the whole of the brown-brick block shown in the photo above. However, with a reported £8m redevelopment budget, it has to be hoped that something creative can be done to get rid of those blank and lifeless façades – either by building out into the open space between it and the new St Andrew’s Way (the redbrick section to the right of the shot), or by punching some more openings into what is currently there.

Clas Ohlson sign

With so many old Woolworths sites being taken over by familiar high street names and pound shops, it’s nice when the new arrival is something a little more interesting. So I was pleased to read that the Swedish “modern hardware brand” Clas Ohlson is going to be opening up in the former Woolies in Kingston upon Thames, and is also looking to occupy the old Woolworths site in Reading.

If you’ve never heard of Clas Ohlson, you can be forgiven. Established by Mr Clas Ohlson in 1918, the company has grown to over 100 stores across Sweden, Norway and Finland. However, its presence in the UK goes back only to November last year, when it opened its first British store in Croydon’s Whitgift Centre (a unit previously split between Books etc. and a standalone George store), followed by a second, in Manchester’s Arndale Centre, in April.

Clas Ohlson's existing Croydon store

In the middle of a recession, some might say that it’s a brave move for any company to make its first ventures into the UK market – particularly given the fate that has recently befallen other homeware retailers such as ILVA and The Pier. To be fair though, Clas Ohlson’s positioning seems to be more as a funkier, Scandinavian twist on Wilkinson or Robert Dyas, mixed with a Lakeland-rivalling array of useful (or merely baffling) gadgets such as plastic drain cleaners, battery testers, painted Dalecarlian horses, and scrubbing gloves for root vegetables.

Certainly, Clas Ohlson’s product range is eclectic and difficult to pigeonhole, with categories such as art supplies, clocks, fishing equipment, stationery and toys sitting alongside an extensive range of household, garden, DIY and electrical products.

Cannily, Clas Ohlson’s assortment also seems to tapping into the growing trend among credit-crunch-savvy Brits for mending rather than replacing, suggesting that:

“British people are just as interested as us in the Nordic region in fixing various things in their homes. Our broad range of products that solve small, practical problems in everyday life satisfies these interests and needs.”

With only Croydon and Manchester to choose from, I haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit either of Clas Ohlson’s UK shops. However, it looks and sounds very much like the type of store in which I could happily spend some considerable time, with lots of interesting, practical items presented within a store environment that is typically Scandinavian – clean, modern, and with a distinctive and engaging personality.

During the 2009/10 financial year, the company apparently plans to open four to eight stores in the UK, which raises the question of where those additional new stores might be. Might Newcastle be on the target list?

Clas Ohlson is certainly the type of store that would bring some more interest to Newcastle city centre, and with the completion of the Eldon Square extension next spring there will be a fair amount of existing retail space being freed up. Realistically though, the city centre doesn’t have very many units available that are big enough or in the right place.

Eldon Square’s new St Andrew’s Way, anchored by Debenhams and New Look, will offer the quality, modern space that Clas Ohlson would be looking for, but seems fairly full up already^{[broken link removed]} - mostly, it must be said, with relocations from the older parts of Eldon Square (more of that, perhaps, in a future post). The premises that New Look will be freeing up (the former WHSmith store in Sidgate) are over two levels and are about the right size, but suffer from being at the gloomiest and seemingly least visited end of Eldon Square. So, no good there.

Elsewhere in the city centre, something must surely happen eventually to the wonderful former Co-op department store building in Newgate Street, particularly now that it has become a prime location directly opposite the entrance to the new Debenhams. With five floors to fill, however, it’s unlikely to suit Clas Ohlson – or any of the other big names currently missing from Newcastle, such as Zara – unless the building gets carved up between several retailers.

The empty Co-op department store in Newcastle

The unit previously occupied by The Pier in the attractive Eldon Garden shopping centre might also be an option. Across two floors, it’s probably just about big enough, and would attract those gadget-hungry shoppers who already visit the nearby Lakeland shop. On the downside, Eldon Garden’s rather peripheral location and seemingly high turnover of stores may not offer the best environment for long term success.

Rather, I would put my money on the ideal location for Clas Ohlson being the old Zavvi store in Monument Mall. As I observed in a blog post just over a year ago, Monument Mall seems to have been struggling of late, with the unfortunate, but unavoidable, loss of Zavvi following on from the departure of Boots, Benetton and JJB Sports.

With so many closures, you can perhaps excuse the floor plan on the Monument Mall website^{[broken link removed]} for suggesting that the shopping centre still houses all these shops, along with a ’Virgin Megastore’. (Seriously, though – what on earth is going on when a shopping centre’s official website features a mall guide that is two years out of date? Truly terrible PR.)

Given this backdrop, Monument Mall would surely welcome the arrival of a strong anchor store, while the three-storey Zavvi unit would give Clas Ohlson all the space it needs along with a prominent frontage on Northumberland Street, Newcastle’s prime shopping thoroughfare.

So, Clas Ohlson – how about it?