I went to the retail park the Homebase in question is on today (I went to Sainsbury's if you're interested) and it appears to be a bit more than a new Argos. The Homebase is becoming a 'Homebase design centre', and new signage they'd been putting up whilst I was in Sainsbury's carries the Homebase logo, with 'design centre' underneath, and then also the Argos and Laura Ashley (?) logos. I'm not sure if the Laura Ashley logo is just referencing they stock the brand or if they're getting a little outlet in-store too. The Argos has it's own Facebook page and has posted this exciting photo of works in-store...Critique wrote:I've been hearing rumblings on the grapevine that our local Homebase is getting an Argos installed within it soon, and that it's allegedly being some sort of concept store, with iPads instead of catalogs and other such new things. Who knows, maybe they'll even have a plasma with the order numbers on instead of an ancient CRT with the colours all out? Previously Homebase and Argos have been run very separately (although possibly some Homebase lines have been sold in Argos?) so it'll be interesting to see if this is a way to consolidate the two if profits are falling?
Alternatively, these rumblings may be lies and there may be many Argos stores with iPads and plasmas in. We wouldn't know here, our local branch has the old logo on it still and those blue stockcheck machines.
And also this photo of presumably what it will look like inside...
Meanwhile, leading on from the numerous posts I think I've made about my local Co-op society, and they're rolling out their lovely new branding to shops actually in my area now, and appear to have started with the big Co-op Supermarket at Rosehill, which is now branded as a 'Co-op Daily' and uses the nice serif font everywhere. I'm impressed they've updated all the external car park signage, including the 'Thanks for visiting, see you soon' board and the little signs about maximum stays in the car park. I don't have a photo of how it looks now but it previously looked like this...
They've had a shake up indoors too, with the tills now a row along the wall, meaning they have access to the cigarettes (before the conveyor belt one was a little island all alone), and everything has generally moved around. They've got rid of the manned deli counter in the refresh, with deli products on special shelving instead where the counter used to be - the amount of deli stuff they have continues to be pretty big though, so I imagine the only difference is that they've removed the customer-facing counter and now do it behind a false-wall. They appeared to have a little mobile Co-op which was about the size of a lorry trailer as the Co-op itself was closed for a few days for the refit.
Interestingly, they're having a little EoE Co-op Travel outlet opening up in some unused space indoors soon, which is different to usual as previously we've had a standalone 'Co-operative Travel' store in the town centre (now closed and directs you to Thomas Cook) and not a locally branded version. The EoE website shows that they've already opened one of these elsewhere, so I assume this is a thing they're doing now as they're making a fair bit of profit and can afford to expand. Saying that, they did close a Co-op down Norwich road this year as the new Tesco Express a few doors down appeared to be taking all the business - they re-opened it as a branch of their funeral care service instead.
