Metropol

What's the deal with the national Co-op chain having stores in areas where Scotmid, the EoE Co-op operates? There's one Co-operative in Norwich that I know of, otherwise I can't recall ever having seen one in our area - we used to have Co-operative travel stores here but the one local to me closed years ago now, with an EoE Co-op travel now inside a big co-op here.

Critique wrote:What's the deal with the national Co-op chain having stores in areas where Scotmid, the EoE Co-op operates? There's one Co-operative in Norwich that I know of, otherwise I can't recall ever having seen one in our area - we used to have Co-operative travel stores here but the one local to me closed years ago now, with an EoE Co-op travel now inside a big co-op here.

There's nothing to stop societies from competing with one another as they please. A bit of historic perspective:
All the societies bought from CWS (Wholesale Society) who acted as a union between societies, and held responsibility for creating a unified storefront and things like that.
CRS (Retail Society) was formed to introduce a Co-op presence where local societies had not. They too bought from CWS, and generally avoided opening new shops treading on other societies toes. CRS also acted as an owner of last resort for failing societies. By the 70s, loss making societies were falling in their ownership faster than they could open new sites which stood a chance of making money. Eventually they washed their hands of their constitutional responsibility to takeover failed societies, and CWS assumed that responsibility.

Bare in mind that 'the model' was still supposed to be that CWS was a wholesaler and umbrella supporting other societies including CRS.

My understanding is that by the late 90s there was quite an intense distrust between CRS and CWS (who inevitably had begun to step on eachothers toes), hence CRS dropping the CWS branding and stuff. The lines of responsibility were seriously blurred. A merger between the two was more or less forced upon them - but that only served to make the local societies paranoid of the newly enlarged group's intentions - they were now able to open stores pretty much wherever they pleased which made for an uneasy conflict of interests as they were also supposed to be responsibile for promoting the society-owned stores. This reached a peak when Alldays was taken over - to allay fears the Co-op sold stores in traditional society areas at a very attractive rate, intended as a goodwill gesture. It didn't help much - the Co-op societies, many of which were struggling and on the brink of bankruptcy, began a series of defensive maneuvers intended to challenge the Co-operative Group - mergers created large groups like United.

Needless to say the distrust was such that when the Co-operative Group consumed Somerfield they didn't extend the olive branch again. Regardless, whatever gentlemens agreement there might have been between societies and the group has basically gone to pot.

Critique wrote:What's the deal with the national Co-op chain having stores in areas where Scotmid, the EoE Co-op operates? There's one Co-operative in Norwich that I know of, otherwise I can't recall ever having seen one in our area - we used to have Co-operative travel stores here but the one local to me closed years ago now, with an EoE Co-op travel now inside a big co-op here.

The Co Op travel in my town was shut recently in favour of revamping the existing Thomas Cook a minutes walk away. Never understood why Cooks acquired them when they already had a massively bloated estate of travel agents (at one point we also had a Going Places so three Thomas Cook shops in a very small town!)

This...



...became this today...



Note the 'Co-operative food' sticker still in the front window. Still, a marked improvement - and interesting they replaced the white hanging sign you can just see in the first picture with a permanent, thicker blue one.

Do you have a bigger version of that photo? Looks really classy

One of the local Co-op's has finally finished it's transformation and opened this morning:





A lot more bright and pleasant on the inside with more open windows at the front of the store - I never did understand why the Co-operative Food refurbishments usually involved moving the kiosk right in front of the windows. New luxuries as well such as self service registers and pleasant staff. They seem to have taken on some new people, and there were what appeared to be a couple of senior managers in the store being quite forceful in ensuring all the staff were being extremely smiley and helpful. Time will tell how things turn out long term...

That White Lane one certainly looks a lot smarter now. But isn't the text on the Horn Lane one a little hard to read? I would've used white there too.

thecorrector wrote:This...



...became this today...



Note the 'Co-operative food' sticker still in the front window. Still, a marked improvement - and interesting they replaced the white hanging sign you can just see in the first picture with a permanent, thicker blue one.

Not sure I like this one to be honest. Nowhere near as eye-catching and just exposes the dirty brickwork underneath.

Pete wrote:Do you have a bigger version of that photo? Looks really classy

https://www.flickr.com/photos/143605116 ... Ak5-GMPN3G

Ooh, must say I agree with Phil. The image of the second store looks really nice with the black panelling, but the first one looks a bit dark - certainly white lettering would have been better IMO.

The Horn Lane Co-op's had even more changes in the last week - going from this...



...to this...



Lettering now in white, window/door frames repainted grey, opening hours sticker updated to reflect the new branding. If anything, though, the store stands out even less with that lack of white.

Interestingly, the hanging Co-op sign lights up at night in a neon blue, but the one over the door doesn't.