Metropol

Why the heck did they have two stores in that mall in the first place?

It's a very big shopping centre, though it is a bit odd. From memory, they had a very small shop located near the entrance of one of the multi-story car parks and a larger one within the section of the Metro dubbed "the antiques village" (probably been done away with and intu-fied now).

Pretty sure they had a third outlet in another corner of the centre at one point too. I'm not over 80 so I'm only partially confident.

JAS84 wrote:Why the heck did they have two stores in that mall in the first place?

A wild guess but perhaps they both made money?

Also the Metrocentre is one of the those Malls that you don't always end up getting all the way around.

Jonny wrote:It's a very big shopping centre, though it is a bit odd. From memory, they had a very small shop located near the entrance of one of the multi-story car parks and a larger one within the section of the Metro dubbed "the antiques village" (probably been done away with and intu-fied now).

I think the little themed areas went a while back did they not? They seemed to specialise in smaller stores.

But yes, the thing with Metro Centre you often forget is it is ridiculously large and you can easily only cover a small portion of it in a day.

Pete wrote:

Jonny wrote:It's a very big shopping centre, though it is a bit odd. From memory, they had a very small shop located near the entrance of one of the multi-story car parks and a larger one within the section of the Metro dubbed "the antiques village" (probably been done away with and intu-fied now).

I think the little themed areas went a while back did they not? They seemed to specialise in smaller stores.

But yes, the thing with Metro Centre you often forget is it is ridiculously large and you can easily only cover a small portion of it in a day.

That's got to be an exaggeration, surely? A bit of googling has Metrocentre down as 1.8m sq. ft., which is equal to the Trafford Centre. Perhaps this doesn't include the former Metroland space, but even then...

I visited the Trafford Centre last year; it was certainly very large but with a couple of hours of shopping I'm pretty sure we saw most of it. Is Metrocentre's layout more like Merry Hill - where it's very easy to miss entire wings?

Metro Centre has a very odd layout due to the wings, but its also quite complex in certain parts, its been simplified in recent years but there were some mazey parts back in the 90s

Collectables certainly isn't unique in having multiple branches within the Metrocentre: off the top of my head, within the main centre, there are five branches of Costa (plus one on the neighbouring retail park), three of Greggs, two of Nando's, two of Thomas Cook, two of WHSmith, two of Vodafone, two of Holland and Barratt, two of Starbucks (plus one outside), two of Subway, and there are probably many more repeats besides.

tillyoshea wrote:Collectables certainly isn't unique in having multiple branches within the Metrocentre: off the top of my head, within the main centre, there are five branches of Costa (plus one on the neighbouring retail park), three of Greggs, two of Nando's, two of Thomas Cook, two of WHSmith, two of Vodafone, two of Holland and Barratt, two of Starbucks (plus one outside), two of Subway, and there are probably many more repeats besides.

Oh yeah, doubling (or tripling, etc.) up in large malls and town centres is nothing new; but when you're only reopening such a small portfolio of stores it seems a strange move - you can realistically expect one to be cannibalising the other to some extent at least.

In related news, the last HMV is closing in Nottingham, leaving only Fopp as the group's representation in town. At one stage there were 3 (aswell as Fopp).

The Oxford HMV (as discussed in the new year) never did close - the lease was supposed to run out on 17th March, and they run a substantial closing down sale, but presumably it has been renewed, as the shop did not shut and all the references to it closing down have been removed.

WillPS wrote:...you can realistically expect one to be cannibalising the other to some extent at least.

That's not such a problem with Collectables, as the two stores which have reopened stock different ranges.

With the Co-operative Group posting massive losses, my local society (the East of England Co-op) seem to be keen to distance themselves from the Co-operative Group and have nicely made signs in all the stores (using the lovely EoE co-op branding with no Calibri/Times New Roman in sight no less) reinforcing how they're not part of the Co-operative Group, they have their own local board of directors and that they're profitable and expanding (330 million turnover last year). In what could be further distancing, I've noticed that a few branches have had their Co-operative Bank cash machines ripped out and new 'Cashzone' machines have been installed in their place, albeit with Co-op Bank software. All this leads to the question of how much involvement the Co-operative group actually has in the societies? They use the Co-op font on all their posters advertising offers but their labels and barkers all use a different font, and the logo of the main Co-operative appears in a few spots around the shop, in addition to all the Co-op own brand stuff, so there's clearly a fair bit of involvement, but how much?