Metropol

ashley b wrote:

nwtv2003 wrote:When they opened the new Next in Altrincham in the early Spring, the newly built store had the 'next...' logo on the signage, first time I've seen it anywhere, I guess it's just being phased in slowly.

This is where I saw it first too, was quite surprised, makes you wonder how they're going to adapt the Manchester flagship store with the new logo, with the "NEXT" in boxes down the side and stuff.

They've got loads to change with that store, it's the biggest Next in the UK I believe.., Warrington town centre Next will be getting it soon as they're moving out of their current shop into the new bit of Golden Square, this will be September apparently.

Square Eyes wrote:PS. When did "House of Fraser" drop the individual store names, ie. Binns, Rackhams, David Evans etc. in favour of the generic "House of Fraser" brand ?

Think it's an ongoing thing, there are still a few stores left, Rackhams in Altrincham for example. Kendals in Manchester changed over last year I think?[/quote]

Aren't they going to be demolishing that bit soon? I think all of it is part of the Stamford Quarter redevelopment thing, so I guess there's little point in changing if it's going to close/relocate. They've just started work between M&S and WHSmith now, so that bit is going to be demolished soon and they've started on the old Car Park too.

So thats what you boys do while loitering outside next. I always thought they were waiting for their women to finish shopping. Now i know that if i see a group of blokes nattering outside next they're really discussing the rebrand.

I remember in the late 90s when Halifax bought out The Leeds building society there were a lot of places which ended up with two Halifax branches as a result.

In Headingley, where I lived then, they were actually next-door to each other which looked very bizarre. At the time, Halifax claimed they wouldn't be closing branches. But of course they did.

Nothing unusal there, of course, but if somebody could explain to me why Horsham needs a second branch of Nationwide within 50 yards of the original one, I'd love to know.

It's a common practice to safeguard jobs in the immediate future to avoid a negative edge being put on the merger. In cities where the news is made they'll retain all of them, but eventually in smaller towns they will close one of the branches but it will be a few years down the line, won't make news, and will save the bank the negative publicity of the inevitable job losses.

Exactly the same thing happened when Lloyds Bank and TSB merged - for several years even quite small towns had two branches of Lloyds TSB, often on the same street. Not so now - most towns have lost one.

I was in Bromley the other week (having not been there since my uni days) and saw that Argos had bought the old Index store - so there were now two branches of Argos in the same town (add to that the two branches of Carphone Warehouse, four Clintons cards, two McDonalds, but that's another story).

Argos did that in Plymouth as well (although admittedly the original Argos store, despite being larger, is not in the main pedestrianised part of the city centre, whilst the smaller ex-Index store is in a much better trading position). Same thing happened when Game took over Electronics Boutique - there were then two Game stores almost directly across the road from each other.

Maybe in Horsham they are using it as a good way of moving the branch into the newer portman premises and closing there other branch! forgive me if I'm wrong but isn't Portman next to the bookshop, and nationwide opposite on the carfax? It would make sense to me for them to move into the newer, and by the looks of it bigger Portman branch.

On the Argos subject they did the same in Worthing, taking over the Index shop and keeping their own store going too! although I believe they are opening (or may have done so) one by the out of town Sainsbury's so maybe they will close one of the town center ones now.

As for next I quite like it the big superstore in Crawley was changed a couple of weeks ago, don't mind the typeface or font but my only niggle is it doesn't look quite right not centered but justified to the right, but might just take a bit of getting used too.

cwathen wrote:Exactly the same thing happened when Lloyds Bank and TSB merged - for several years even quite small towns had two branches of Lloyds TSB, often on the same street. Not so now - most towns have lost one.

We actually still have two, and they're not far from each other either. We also had 3 Halifaxes at one point- there was a small branch in the centre, a larger one at the top end of town and a former Leeds branch on the same street as the larger Halifax. In 1996 they closed them all down and moved to a new large branch next door to where the small Halifax was.

Also, the Boots logo mentioned on the last page- we actually learnt about the history of Boots at school and from old photos we saw, I can tell you the current logo dates back to at least the 1880s.

The new next logo, is one of the few examples of a good rebrand. Retain the best of the old, and change which sucks!

BBC Logo
Sky Logo
Sainsbury's Logo
Odeon Logo

to name a few...

We got a delivery from them and I realised this, as the bag from the day before had the TNR-like logo, and then the next day, new curly-bloody-wurly one, but wasn't sure if it was a rebrand or just a change for bags or something like the catalogue design.

It can be confusing, as companies sometimes have 2 different logos for no real reason, like Marks & Spencer who use the "Your M&S" logo promotionally but use the "Marks & Spencer" logo on store signage and products. Sainsbury's were the same for much of the 1990s- they had the old capitalised logo in use on stores and on products, but on adverts, carrier bags, some in-store signage and the website they used a logo that wasn't hugely different to the current one. God knows why they did this, it was quite confusing. It was like it for around 4 or 5 years.

james2001 wrote:It can be confusing, as companies sometimes have 2 different logos for no real reason, like Marks & Spencer who use the "Your M&S" logo promotionally but use the "Marks & Spencer" logo on store signage and products. Sainsbury's were the same for much of the 1990s- they had the old capitalised logo in use on stores and on products, but on adverts, carrier bags, some in-store signage and the website they used a logo that wasn't hugely different to the current one. God knows why they did this, it was quite confusing. It was like it for around 4 or 5 years.

And there was me thinking it wouldn't really take more than a miniscule amount of intelligence to cope with two logos for a shop or work out that Your M&S refers to Marks and Spencer...

In Ipswich we had the head Lloyds Bank one side of the main town square and the head TSB the other side. For some reason we still have two - in the same places... :roll: