Yet another Morrisons thread

Spencer For Hire
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StuartPlymouth wrote:When they refurbished one of our local Safeways they kept it open. It was like doing your shopping in the middle of a building site. I only ever used that store if I was passing anyway.

I used to like Morrisons when I lived in the North-East, but they have bitten off more than they can chew by buying Safeway and don't seem to have the business acumen to make the most of it. Given their losses over the last 2 years I can't see them having enough money for a major rebrand. A new logo/colour scheme would negate all that money spent on rebranding ex-Safeway stores.
Apparently their fortunes have turned around of late, and they're back in the black again. The share price has almost doubled in the past year, so they've probably got a bit more money to play with now.

Incidentally, I agree with the earlier comments about the Leeds store. It's the most unpleasant supermarket I've been in. The aisles are way too narrow and there's a slight whiff of stale wee in the air. It's not changed a single bit since I moved to Leeds in 1994. Given most of the customers seem to be students buying Bettabuy products I guess it's not top of their list to refurbish.
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AJ
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I'm not a fan of Morrisons at all. Dated, tacky and naff.

I spent a very brief spell working at one of their stores late last year (inbetween jobs) and I only lasted a little over 2 weeks.

Some of their practices in the department I was working in were slightly shocking (in my opinion) to say the least aswell.

The uniform is terrible too. So uncomfortable - despite it's made by a respectable workwear brand (Dickies).
Skytower
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MarkN wrote:
Skytower wrote:I suspect that Nick might be a bit late now, seeing as the refit he was talking of was some 17 months ago - unless they're taking an inordinately long amount of time over it... :P
Posted Thu 20th October 2005, 9:15pm
Precisely the point I was making... :?
James Martin
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The Market Street area would be cracking if it didn't stink of stale fish.
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Nick Harvey
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James Martin wrote:cracking
Yeah, the boy's back!
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rdobbie
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Ooh I love a good Morrisons discussion!

This reported "rebrand" just shows we were right when we said it should have been done at the time of the Safeway integration. They could have saved themselves a fortune on new signage if they'd thought of this back then. They've now got a mountain to climb if they want to drag all their stores into the new millennium.

It was hasty and reckless to totally eradicate the Safeway brand image without any real thought. Yes, Safeway was perhaps a bit too expensive and needed bringing into line, but it still had so many strengths which could have been built upon.

And ripping out all those hot pizza counters and replacing them with bloody Pie Shops, when many Safeway stores were in affluent and cosmopolitan areas, was sheer madness. It was as if Sir Ken personally wanted to force the Bradford way of life circa 1970 onto the whole of the UK.

People across the South of England must have been very bemused when they first walked into their old Safeway and saw all that Market Street and Pie Shop crap.

The old Morrisons "theme park" store format didn't work when it was forcibly squeezed to fit into smaller Safeway sites. Our store now has a scaled down version of the Morrisons salad bar with just 7 items on it, and nobody wants to pay that kind of money for a bowl of lettuce leaves and grated cheese, so nobody ever uses it. And all the narrow aisles are blocked with standalone wire baskets full of promotional items, so doing a full shop with a trolley is a nightmare.

At least some of the Morrisons own brand packaging is finally getting revamped, and very nice it looks too. But two years on there's still massive inconsistency - the tin can aisle still has many healthy products branded as the old downmarket Morrisons "Better For You" which never got integrated into the ex-Safeway "Eat Smart" branding, so you have the confusion of two different own brand healthy ranges - not very clever if they seriously want to compete with the other big 3 chains.

Their prices seem to have got very expensive lately and the Buy 1 Get 1 Frees are not what they used to be. We've actually found Sainsbury's is now slightly cheaper on most items, and their whole shopping experience is far more sophisticated so I don't really see any advantages in going to Morrisons whatsoever.

Morrisons Bettabuy range also seems to be priced at 10-20% more than Tesco Value and Sainsbury's Basics.
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rdobbie
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Andrew wrote:Although they do need to get rid of that outdated font, I hope they don't go with some ultramodern but will look dated logo that loads of companies rebrand with thesedays

'morrisons' in lower type, coloured purple with some dodgy punctuation added in for good measure etc
Agreed. Even the current Sainsbury's logo (about 7 years old?) is starting to date badly IMO because the typeface is too stylised.

I think Morrisons would be best off going for a text-only logo in a very clean and timeless font like the Waitrose logo.
Andrew wrote:By the way if you are ever in Bradford, I suggest you visit their city centre store. It really hasn't been touched since the 80s and looks dated to the extreme
As a supermarket presentation anorak I'd be very interested in visiting that store one day!
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tillyoshea
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Reuters is reporting that the new slogan is the comically bad "The food specialist for everyone"
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nidave
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I beleve today is the day the show the new branding to the world - (15/03/2007) so have to see what happens. Like I said before the more reasons was... was a good idea and worked well. The style of the adverts were alsp pretty good - just need the logo updating.
A.J.A.
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marksi wrote:When Morrisons bought the Safeway stores in NI they frequently seemed to not have basics in stock. I only went a few times before I decided Tescos gave me an easier life. Morrisons then sold all their stores here to Asda, they were all refurbished and are now much nicer.
They did, however, have a lovely line of biscuits: http://www.nicecupofteaandasitdown.com/ ... p3?item=27. Hmmm... delicious. Sadly I've been unable to find them anywhere else since. A trip across the water last summer did see a somewhat inordinate number of packets being bought from a Morrisons in Fort William... and a gut developing as a result.
Spencer For Hire
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rdobbie wrote:
Andrew wrote:Although they do need to get rid of that outdated font, I hope they don't go with some ultramodern but will look dated logo that loads of companies rebrand with thesedays

'morrisons' in lower type, coloured purple with some dodgy punctuation added in for good measure etc
Agreed. Even the current Sainsbury's logo (about 7 years old?) is starting to date badly IMO because the typeface is too stylised.

I think Morrisons would be best off going for a text-only logo in a very clean and timeless font like the Waitrose logo.
According to telegraph.co.uk, the revamp is [hideously overused and irritating cliche alert!] "evolution not revolution", so I wouldn't expect anything too different or radical.
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