Wellworths store? Is that a different store play on the Woolworths brand name or a typo?

It should be recorded that this is the last remaining remnant of the old Woolworth empire in the UK and was created in the old Woolworths premises by the management and staff of the original store.

It’s been open for two and a half years now and I’m delighted to report that it is thriving. I understand that they would like to branch out with more Wellworths stores but are stymied by the trademark passing off law being invoked by the new Woolworths brand owner, Shops Direct.

The bad news is that they are likely to have to change the name from Wellworths to Wellchesters.

The good news is that the original brand, Woolworths has been resurrected on-line at http://www.woolworths.co.uk/

Doesn’t quite have the same ring to it though does it.

For instance, aren’t e-tailers like ASOS cleaning up on the Internet?

Thanks for your comment Jeremy

Now they are a niche e-tailer. A warning to us all, perhaps?

Another blog you may find interesting in terms of the retail world is my recent post about Outstanding SME Branding – http://www.trulyace.com/blog/design-inspiration/outstanding-sme-branding/

I don’t think it will because I think that people like to go and look at products before they buy and enjoy the whole experience of being out shopping, so with the right sort of high street you’ll always have people interested in visiting it.

If the high street is going to survive and attract those who like to go out shopping they need to take another look at what they are offering compared to the Internet and realise that they have stiff competition and they need to step it up a notch.

High street brands have become lazy and offer boring products and not a shred of originality. If they want to reclaim the High street and achieve good sales once more they need to improve vastly. Perhaps the collapse of many large brands will make room for some innovators.

Grenville Hamlyn

I think I might hold the UK, if not the World Record for a single sale over a Woolworths counter.

It was back in 1969 when they created a new flagship Oxford Street store and for the first time scrapped the wooden floorboards and went for all glass and marble. Way back then they were already investing heavily in attempting to change their image.

I ran a jewellery concession just inside the front doors facing Oxford Street and caused quite a stir when the shop opened its doors for the first time. I’d hired the biggest Securicor van and guards I could find and arrived in the back of it with the reigning Miss England, Miss Scotland and Miss Wales decked out with £25K’s worth of Hatton Garden diamond jewellery (this was before the phrase Political Correctness had been thought of and considered to be OK at the time….).

The ensuing publicity was amazing; TV interviews, one recorded in the store then another one live in the BBC Nationwide studio which was broadcast concurrently with the recording on ITV. We had almost saturation coverage for about fifteen minutes on prime time on a Friday night; BBC2 had only recently started and there were no other channels.

The next day at 9:00am I had a crowd of people wanting to see the Woollies Diamonds. The queue stretched at least 200 metres (yards then, of course) along Oxford Street. Following this, there were approx 600 column inches in the national press and even 6 months later I found myself doing an interview for the New Zealand edition of Women’s Own magazine!

The sales record? I sold a diamond bracelet for £2,500.00 across the counter. I’d be interested to know if anyone has bettered this during the last almost 40 years.

Phil Shepherd

Do we think it’s the beginning end of the high street as we know it? Now that online shopping has become so popular?

I’d love to see smaller independent shops start to litter the high street and provide it with something a bit more interesting than the same old same old we’ve been suffering for many years.