Metropol

I see it's over for Focus now, ours went a few years back when Tesco bought the store off them to become Tesco Home.

Our local Focus has roots back to the late 1980s when it was a Great Mills store and the retail park was built - it still retains a lot of the Great Mills decor with hideous pink and lime green floor tiles. It's been pretty much deserted since a new Homebase opened nearby a couple of years ago - I can't imagine it'll be missed after everyone's nabbed everything in the closing down sale.

yeah ours was a Do It All at first and was not the best of stores then.

DJDave wrote:yeah ours was a Do It All at first and was not the best of stores then.

WHSmiths Do-It-All I'd imagine!

Merry Hill looked much better on camera than in-person. Those slabs of polished terracotta really are dreadful.

My local Focus, which was built 5 years ago, is a bit of a strange one. It was chopped in half last year, with one half becoming an M&S Simply Food, and the remaining half becoming what Focus describe here as "the first small-format store".

The trouble is, the store is now too small for the likes of B&Q or Homebase to want to take it over, so it looks like Congleton's going to be left without any DIY store (the independent one on the high street closed down soon after Focus first opened).

As with Woolies, it seems that all the Point of Sale material for the Focus closing down sale is being produced externally by the administrators and doesn't even attempt to conform to any of the Focus branding (which, let's face it, wouldn't have been difficult - they only had to use Futura!)

Some puzzling website goings-on too: http://www.focusdiy.co.uk now redirects to http://www.focus-d-i-y.co.uk which then asks you to visit http://www.everythingmustbesold.com

I've always thought this is a bulk made "lcosing down" pos. It was used in Borders too

rdobbie wrote:My local Focus, which was built 5 years ago, is a bit of a strange one.

They were in the process of applying for planning permission to split the Chippenham branch up into smaller units when the news of the collapse came through.

As I understand it, the application was cancelled by the administrators as it would have involved paying Wiltshire Council money.

I see that Viking Direct is now Viking, complete with doodles.

Looks quite smart, but part of Viking's charm for me was that very dated logo.

scottishtv wrote:I see that Viking Direct is now Viking, complete with doodles.

Looks quite smart, but part of Viking's charm for me was that very dated logo.

They sent out a mini-catalogue with their old logo on, merely days before they rebranded. And, for a small amount of time, the new logo was being used on the Google adverts, but not on the website - leading to a quite weird discontinuity.

Bit of an offshoot from that Argos TV discussion over at the other place (which is straying into Metropol territory), does everyones branch of Argos now have those touch screen stock checkers ? As opposed to those old calculator style LCD efforts ?