Yet another Morrisons thread

woah
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Joined: Sun 28 Mar, 2010 12.39

What seems odd to me is that they've taken on a set of stores that they know weren't generally making money (hence why they were being sold) and now they've changed the range and pricing of the stores to be even less competitive than before. I know there's been a limited time to get a large number of stores up and running but it doesn't seem a great start - I just hope they find something that can differentiate them the stores from the endless Tesco/JS stores (in a good way!)

On a slightly different subject, I thought all M Local stores were sold but I noticed one of the stores local to me had been retained (Sheffield Broomhill) - it only opened as a Morrisons around January and was branded as an M Local store. I've not been by it since the My Local switchover so I'm not sure if it is still branded as a Local.
simonipswich
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Joined: Tue 21 May, 2013 14.11
Location: Ipswich

james2001 wrote:Was in Nottingham earlier this week- the M Local in the train station is now a more expensive My Local- so now it's preferable to just go to the Tesco Express accross the road or the Sainsbury's Local down the street. Probably won't last there much longer!
I can't see My Local surviving; the Ipswich one is dead now, the car park only has a couple of cars in this week when I have been past. With more expensive Nisa brands and branded items it's not going to last. Been in once, wasn't impressed at all so won't be going back.
woah
Posts: 366
Joined: Sun 28 Mar, 2010 12.39

*ignore*
woah
Posts: 366
Joined: Sun 28 Mar, 2010 12.39

woah wrote: On a slightly different subject, I thought all M Local stores were sold but I noticed one of the stores local to me had been retained (Sheffield Broomhill) - it only opened as a Morrisons around January and was branded as an M Local store. I've not been by it since the My Local switchover so I'm not sure if it is still branded as a Local.
In answer to this (sort of) I went by another M Local that's been retained by Morrisons in Manchester at the weekend, and here's what they've done to the signage:

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JAS84
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Joined: Fri 12 Aug, 2011 10.23
Location: Hull, UK

They could have kept the yellow oval M up - the full name isn't on the same piece of wall (is that because the sign originally read Morrisons (M) Local, with only the corner sign being newly put there?).

Though saying that, they have been trialling a new look. If they roll that out to all the stores, this new signage will be taken down in a matter of months! They might as well have put the new logo there now, to save money later on.
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WillPS
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JAS84 wrote:They could have kept the yellow oval M up - the full name isn't on the same piece of wall (is that because the sign originally read Morrisons (M) Local, with only the corner sign being newly put there?).

Though saying that, they have been trialling a new look. If they roll that out to all the stores, this new signage will be taken down in a matter of months! They might as well have put the new logo there now, to save money later on.
Here are your answers: http://c8.alamy.com/comp/DY6066/270214- ... DY6066.jpg

And I'd be surprised to see the old brand eliminated that quickly. The pre-1999 JS logo lives on in at least one branch to this day...
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JAS84
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Location: Hull, UK

Thanks, I guessed right then. Good point about Sainsbury's - I think the same is true of Tesco.
james2001
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Joined: Sat 04 Jun, 2005 23.10

You mean the Worksop branch of Tesco which still has the pre-1990 logo and the "typewriter" font all over it? Or at least it did last time I was there!
cwathen
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Joined: Fri 15 Aug, 2003 17.28

woah wrote:What seems odd to me is that they've taken on a set of stores that they know weren't generally making money (hence why they were being sold) and now they've changed the range and pricing of the stores to be even less competitive than before. I know there's been a limited time to get a large number of stores up and running but it doesn't seem a great start - I just hope they find something that can differentiate them the stores from the endless Tesco/JS stores (in a good way!)
I'd like to know what their business plan is to make money out of these locations. After all, it's not like M Local was a once succesful format which they've offloaded through hard times and a new owner with new investment could make a go of it; the majority of these stores were brand new openings within the past couple of years. Morrisons presumably wouldn't just give up on that investment lightly, thus the only assumption that can be made is that they never worked in the first place, and there's plenty of anecdotal evidence of that.

I would say a lot of them suffer from poor locations - eg Tescos have several express stores in Torquay but these work because they are located in suburban areas where the competition is McColls or a Mom & Pop corner shop, in which case a Tesco Express blows these alternatives out of the water. But the M Local (which has been retained as a My Local) is located in the town centre (an ex Blockbusters unit, as many were) around the corner from a pretty large Tesco Metro store which is cheaper and has a much larger range. The Morrisons store never stood a chance against this and was always completely dead, so how on earth is it supposed to be successful now with an even smaller range and even higher prices?

Anyhoo, below is the said Torquay store. Even by the standards we've seen in other stores, this would appear to be a bit of a friday afternoon job - a couple of 'Fresh, Friendly, Convenient' boxes to cover up the Morrisons sign, a new flagpole sign around the corner and we're done.

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WillPS
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Have a look at Haldanes/Ugo.

tl;dr - slow down on paying invoices, slow down to the extent that you're actually not paying anything other than VAT, stock and staff wages. Pay directors a *massive* salary out of the cash mountain. Once cash mountain is depleted, stop paying for stock. Once that pot has run dry, put the company in administration. Leave the treasury to pay the remainder of staff wages, redundancy on top of whatever tax hasn't been paid.

Isn't capitalism wonderful?
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