Metropol

Our Co-op is Scotmid - Scottish and Midland Co-operative Society. Mostly supplied by CWS, I think.

This Co-Op thing is a whole new dimension. Just to demonstrate what I do with a PC at 1:28 in the morning, I went to http://www.co-op.co.uk/

It's a completely different world! I even worked my way on to a domain type by the name of .coop! Perhaps the Co-Operative Movement has its own system of parliament and legislation? Maybe Scotmid is a devolved assembly of some kind?

Or maybe I'm reading too much into a group of shops and should go to bed?

DAS wrote:Or maybe I'm reading too much into a group of shops and should go to bed?

tut, tut, tut daniel, you were doing so well until that point

they are not a group of companies - "type of company" would be more accurate.

Flava wrote:Black and yellow, doh

Well I don't, every Morrisons employee has to wear a shortsleeve shirt with the 'M' logo on the sleeves, a Morrisons tie and black trousers, nothing embarassing and then you have to wear something over it, depending on what department you work on.

Wow... never really thought about why the co-op is called the co-op until I looked at this

I must be bored too

i wouldn't be surprised if co-operatives didn't become more popular, as people seem to be more suspicious of large corporations - especially multinationals like walmart, not to mention the co-op's support of fair trade and clear labelling of products.

indeed from their website midlands co-op seem to be doing very well.

Profits
Trading profit for the year, before exceptional items, was £14.2 million, a 6.2% increase on last year.

http://www.midlandsco-op.com/annual_rep ... ameset.htm

tvmercia wrote:
there is no such thing as "the co-op" or a "national co-op". the nearest there is to a national co-op is CWS (also known as the co-operative group), who are a big society based in the northwest who run the co-op bank, and stores throughout the north of england.

and so, naturally (just like on itv in the past) branding of these wholly independent societies varies from region to region.

Looking at some websites, some of the biggest seem to be:

United Co-Op, which own 450 stores in the North West, Yorkshire and the North Midlands. Brands used are Late Shop, Food Market also there are 6 big supermarkets that I think are just called Co-op. Department stores use the Sunwin brand. This apparantly was formed with a merger of United Norwest co-op and Yorkshire co-op in 2001.

The Co-Operative Group owns 1,600 stores and uses Co-Op Welcome, Co-op [local town name] and Alldays (who they bought in 2001) brands. This company is what used to be known as CWS and a Scottish co-op

I wonder, are Pioneer, Leo's and Living brands still used at all?

Andrew wrote:The Co-Operative Group owns 1,600 stores and uses Co-Op Welcome, Co-op [local town name] and Alldays (who they bought in 2001) brands. This company is what used to be known as CWS and a Scottish co-op

I wonder, are Pioneer, Leo's and Living brands still used at all?

Pioneer --> Co-op [local town name]
Living and Homeworld (?) shops were closed when CWS decided to focus on food items only.

The new Comet logo has been on one in Romford (Essex) since about 2000/2001 & I thought it was a rebrand they had abandonded

the new comet logo is for new stores styled on some american brand they visited a few years ago, the first black and white logo that looks like the red and white one is mark 1 which was only one store i think, the first 'superstore', mark 2 was then implimented with a again different logo, all stores with a black and white logo have a completly different layout, comet don't consider this as a rebrand just a different store all togerther.

The reason why the comet logo is
different is because COMET was bought by Kesa electrics
and they did a quick rebrand of the orignal logo.