Are Woolworth's 'Wellworth' it?

steddenm · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 18.40

An ex-Woolworths member of staff has re-opened the Dorchester store under the name 'Wellworths'... could we see more of these back on the High Street? Wellworths have even bought back Pic'n'Mix!

marksi · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 18.50

There were many Wellworths stores in Northern Ireland until the 1990s (nothing to do with this venture). The stores were bought over, some by Supervalu, some by Asda and some by Sainsbury.

Old Wellworths is here, just before the end of the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT9p3iZwOCY

Sput · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 18.51

Do they sell soap?

barcode · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 19.32

I do believe she has plans to open up a couple of more stores in the area, but this is a great idea and is bucking the tend of many other compaines

Nini · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 20.14

I grow confused by the redundancy of typed copyright tags for images with copyright tags on them. So, we get a store much like Woolworths in the site of what was a Woolworths run by a former manager of said Woolworths.

Where's the logic in this? Once the nostalgia wears off you still have a failed business model and I can't see how they'll be able to keep this going.

lukey · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 20.24

marksi wrote:There were many Wellworths stores in Northern Ireland until the 1990s (nothing to do with this venture). The stores were bought over, some by Supervalu, some by Asda and some by Sainsbury.

Old Wellworths is here, just before the end of the clip.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uT9p3iZwOCY

Does Maxwell House still taste like gravy?

Col · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 20.41

I imagine she's never heard of the old Norn-Irn Wellworths, but I'm sure she's glad they aren't around to slap a lawsuit on her.

Then again, and hopefully Mark can confirm this, didn't Wellworths rip off Woolies with adopting the red/white colour scheme after they did? I remember my parents having an old Wellworths bag with the "Your money buys more at a Wellworths store" and a brown/blue colour scheme which I use to keep toy cars in.

nwtv2003 · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 21.06

Although I've never been to Dorchester, so I can't comment, but my understanding is that Woolies did tend to do well when they had no major competition halting them wherever they'd be located. For instance they have a better chance of suceeding when they were the biggest shop in that Village or town, or to have no supermarket competition.

For me (and I know for a fair few of my friends aswell), we've only seen Woolworths as a shop that sells DVD's and Music, we never really went in for anything else, problem is these days that Supermarkets and the Internet have brought down the prices of CD's and DVD's, where as Woolies weren't always the cheapest.

It's quite a depressing sight when you walk past Woolies in Warrington, although everything's locked they don't have shutters so you can see in, and there's just nothing but a goodbye message from all the staff. Although it wasn't the busiest shop, it always seemed to be doing okay.

marksi · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 21.39

I don't think you could say that Wellworths ripped of a Woolworths colour scheme. Sure they both had red in the logo but I doubt anyone was ever going to be confused as to which one they were in!

Bangor's Main Street had a Woolworths and a Wellworths practically next door to each other. While Woolworths had a modern feel to the store with the occasional refurb, Wellworths did have a cheaper, more dated feel.

Gavin Scott · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 22.14

There was a Woolco in Livingston 20 years ago, which had the same W as Woolworths, and the same colour scheme.

What was that about?

Gavin Scott · Thu 12 Mar, 2009 22.16

The Almondvale Regional Centre was opened in 1978 when Phase 1 of the multi-million pound development was revealed. The Centre housed stores such as WoolCo and Presto. The "Centre" as it became and still is known to the locals became a main feature of Livingston New Town with car-parking spaces for over 2000 cars.

http://www.livingstonalive.co.uk/history.shtml

I love the net.