What is the Co-op known as where you are?

woah · Sun 12 Jun, 2011 20.46

Cheers for that WillPS - I never went in either. They call it a discount store on the website which suggests it might be old stock that SCS shoved in there from Castle House/Hillsborough - who knows!

WillPS · Sun 12 Jun, 2011 22.53

wells wrote:You've reminded me of this store from near by Bromsgrove, was there for as long as I can remember till a few years ago.

Wow, with that signage?!? Proper vintage!

woah wrote:Cheers for that WillPS - I never went in either. They call it a discount store on the website which suggests it might be old stock that SCS shoved in there from Castle House/Hillsborough - who knows!

It's got to be a possibility - Jarrolds, the independent Norwich department store, has several "clearance" stores spread across Norfolk in this sort of fashion.

westy 2 · Sun 12 Jun, 2011 23.04

Slightly off topic, but when I went to the Norfolk Broads back in 1986, there was several stores in the one village(Wroxham?) that were under the one name(name escapes me!) & I think they were open on a Sunday (pre Sunday trading law change?).

Anyone remember who I might be thinking of & are they still trading?

Jamesypoo · Sun 12 Jun, 2011 23.11

Roys of Wroxham definitely are still trading. I think they're something to do with Nisa now (Nisa branded flyers, in-store radio and "heritage" meat etc). They have several stores dotted around the county.

http://www.roys.co.uk/

WillPS · Sun 12 Jun, 2011 23.29

I always liked Roys when I visited Norfolk. One thing that struck me was how different each branch seemed to be - some were more or less independent supermarkets, whereas some had no/next-to-no food.

wells · Sun 12 Jun, 2011 23.51

WillPS wrote: Wow, with that signage?!? Proper vintage!

No, I think it had two different signs since. Apparently that's from 1992 when it had just opened and they have another picture on that Flicker account from 1993 with a blue sign and I remember something beige towards the end.

Below you can now see it's split into two stores one being a Specsavers the other being a Subway. I've got a feeling that it may have operated in just one of those units towards the end of it's life.

http://maps.google.co.uk/maps?f=q&sourc ... 5,,0,-5.51

westy 2 · Mon 13 Jun, 2011 13.56

Jamesypoo wrote:Roys of Wroxham definitely are still trading. I think they're something to do with Nisa now (Nisa branded flyers, in-store radio and "heritage" meat etc). They have several stores dotted around the county.

http://www.roys.co.uk/

That's the chap.

WillPS · Mon 13 Jun, 2011 23.19

Vaguely Co-op related. CostCutter (remember them?) have recently trademarked 'Kwik Save' and 'Kwiksave'.

I've no idea why. I can't think of a defunct retail brand with more negative connotations attached to it.

stu · Wed 15 Jun, 2011 02.39

I loved their 'No Frills' range.

cwathen · Fri 17 Jun, 2011 17.51

One of the last bastions of CRS branding, the old Pioneer store in Truro, finally had a full refit and rebrand into a 'The Co-Operative Food' a couple of months ago. The store was a originally a Lo-Cost and came under CRS control in 1994 when they bought Lo-Cost from Argyll. The 'Co-Operative Pioneer' signeage which the store wore until April this year went up in 1996 but then became obsolete 3 years later when CRS got bought out by CWS in 1999 who at the time used 'Co-Op <Insert Town Name' for larger stores and 'Co-Op Welcome' for smaller ones. Despite it's prime location in the centre of Cornwall's only city, neither the interior (bits of which were unchanged from Lo-Cost in the 1980's) nor the obsolete exterior ever made it to the top of a refit list whilst all the lesser stores in Cornwall were updated by the early 2000's.

So the signeage survived 15 years, 12 of which as an obsolete brand! If there isn't an award category for that, there damn well should be!

WillPS · Fri 17 Jun, 2011 18.26

cwathen wrote:One of the last bastions of CRS branding, the old Pioneer store in Truro, finally had a full refit and rebrand into a 'The Co-Operative Food' a couple of months ago. The store was a originally a Lo-Cost and came under CRS control in 1994 when they bought Lo-Cost from Argyll. The 'Co-Operative Pioneer' signeage which the store wore until April this year went up in 1996 but then became obsolete 3 years later when CRS got bought out by CWS in 1999 who at the time used 'Co-Op <Insert Town Name' for larger stores and 'Co-Op Welcome' for smaller ones. Despite it's prime location in the centre of Cornwall's only city, neither the interior (bits of which were unchanged from Lo-Cost in the 1980's) nor the obsolete exterior ever made it to the top of a refit list whilst all the lesser stores in Cornwall were updated by the early 2000's.

So the signeage survived 15 years, 12 of which as an obsolete brand! If there isn't an award category for that, there damn well should be!

Awww, I loved the Co-operative Pioneer brand, with the logo which I can only assume was inspired by somebody staring at the Windows logo bottom left of their screen. Ahead of the game though, in ditching the cloverleaf device, and the 'welcome' signage was definitely a retrograde step.

One of the two former-rival-but-now-empty Co-op department stores in Sheffield city centre has been sold. The recently listed Castle House has been sold to a yet unknown group (my hunch is Anglia Regional Society/Westgate), and the food store in the basement will remain.