Brand Roulette - Who's Next For The Bullet?

Ooh, it's been a while. What with Xmas, New year, work and stuff it's easy for a couple of months to whistle past. And what a couple of months it's been for some of the UK's most enduring high street brands.


Woolworths - sustained since the death of the 7-inch single by pick and mix sales, Easter Eggs and selection boxes has finally succumbed to its creeping inertia and slipped down the gurgler; closely followed by other 80's throwback brands Adams and Whittards of Chelsea.


Indeed, all of these anachronistic retailers were way past their sell-by date and had failed to keep pace with shifting consumers sensitivities.


Oh, and there's Zavvi - which was a basket-case from day-one, accelerating its demise by locking into Woolworths' distribution network. Retail genius.


So, as it's still a new (ish) year and we quite fancy a bit of crystal ball-gazing, in the style of Old Moore's Almanac, here are our predictions for the high street brands that won't be booking an Xmas do come December.


1. WH Smith. The new Woolworths. No idea where its brand is at or what it stands for, it's a ramshackle collection of loosely connected products in an environment that screams "1985!". I've been in two recently and it has the stench of death about it. Sale shelves with the air of a ram-raied Sue Ryder shop , empty racks that have't seen product action since Thatcher went mad and the ambience of a bus station toilet.

If you want books you'll go to Waterstones or Amazon. If you want DVDs, you'll go to HMV or play.com. If you want stationery, you'll get it cheaper at Tesco. And, if you want a newspaper, you can pick one up pretty much anywhere.


The only place where WH Smith makes retail sense is at airports, so it's possible that the brand might just retreat to that position.


But if you do want a half-price chocolate orange with your pencil sharpener, you might just have enough time...


2. Little Chef. Affectionately called 'Little Thief' by Britain's truck driving fraternity, what was previously a cheap and cheerful purveyor of the all day breakfast (so called because it's been there all day) is now the purveyor of the obscenely expensive all day breakfast served with a heavy side portion of misery.


As consumers have developed more sophisticated eating habits, Little Chef has stayed rooted in the 80's. Indeed, its authentic 80's furniture, carpets, fittings and staff blast you back all the way to the miners' strike - with all its attendant desperation.


Again, I've been in a couple (out of necessity) recently and it was a depressing experience. With brutally basic, poor quality food either deep fried or microwaved to within a inch of its life it came accompanied in one by sticky cutlery and in the other by chipped crockery. Breakfast cost me just short of £11! For that I can get a skinny-decaf machiatto and a mozerella & pesto panini in Costa Coffee - and still have change for a nice big cake.


Interestingly, they've pulled in top chef Heston Blumenthal to review and revise the menu in an attempt to resuscitate the brand. They don't need a chef: they need an undertaker.


3. H Samuel. Even the briefest sojourn into Samuel's tells you that it's not long for this world. Elizabeth Duke has the chav jewellry market nailed down and everyone with taste is looking at independent jewellers offering creations designed to be worn this side of 1978. The world's largest range of Casio digital watches will only carry H Samuel so far - and it won't be to the end of 2009. Went past one just before Xmas and it was like the Marie Celeste. Ghostly figures in discount sportswear price checking decanters before heading for Argos, and staff looking mournfully out of the windows at the passing crowd.


Again, a retail experience that hasn't budged an inch since Gerald Ratner handed them the retail jewellery market on a plate. In fact, they've been stood still for so long that Ratner is back as an online retailer and doing rather well. Who'd've thought it.



4. Thornton's. Another brand stuck in time: incongriuously pushing 80's style sophistication on ghost-town high streets awash with charity shops, mobile phone retailers and 8x10 sheets of chipboard.


With cash tight in households across all sectors, who realistically is going to go out of their way to spend £6 on a white chocolate bunny when that'll feed a family of four for a week in Lidl? And do people really still like those sickly truffle things that were de rigeur when rave was a lad?


Their only hope? Hang on till Easter, then hang on till mother's day - then hang on till the bailiffs come round.



5. Caffe Nero. In the caffeine fuelled, profligate spending days of the early noughties you always knew you were 50 yards from a Starbucks because you'd pass a Caffe Nero. Piling in on the 'coffee chic' market alongside Whitbread-owned Costa Coffee, Caffe Nero's positoning as offering a 'European style coffee house experience' was probably just enough to set it apart from Starbucks' preppy uber-brand and Costa's local caff style take on 'frothy coffee and a cake'.


But with the global recession trundling in last summer (and the impending reduction in the number of people willing to pay £4 for a brew), Starbucks woke up and smelled the... er... coffee and began a worldwide programme of shop closures - 600 in the US and a complete withdrawal from Australia. In fact, nearly three-quarters of the outlets earmarked for closure are new ones opened since 2006.


So, if it's true that the UK gets a cold six months after the US sneezes we could be in for a major contraction of the UK coffee market.


Starbucks probably has enough slack in its estate to maintain its position as market leader, while Costa has been busy grabbing refreshment franchises in motorway service stations, railway stations, airports and even Tesco to reposition itself as 'coffee for people on the move'.


Which leaves Caffe Nero stranded in no-man's land and favourite to fall down the crack.



If you think that there's a brand that's struggled to keep pace with the retail demands of the 21st century, let us know. It's going to be an interesting year.