Store gallery: Tesco’s Extra special space in Llansamlet, South Wales

The thing about supermarkets is they are frequently hard to navigate.

As a shopper venturing into hypermarket territory, this problem multiplies and all too frequently it becomes a matter of wandering around in hope that you’ll get to where you need to be.

Something of the kind may underpin the design of the Tesco Extra in Llansamlet, just outside Swansea.

Every little Extra helps

Open in its revamped form for a little over two weeks, this is a very large store, 80,000 sq ft of it, with everything from a large, semi-discrete F&F clothing shop-in-shop, to homewares and the kind of food and drink offer that demands signage that does not overpower but informs.

“The F&F shop-in-shop occupies around a quarter of the store’s total selling area and other high-level indicators are dotted around the space”

Standing at the threshold therefore, the first thing that is evident is F&F, with the attention grabbed by an outsize digital screen positioned in the middle of the space given to clothing.

The F&F shop-in-shop occupies around a quarter of the store’s total selling area and other high-level indicators are dotted around the space, with the white neon ‘Kids’ sign being particularly prominent.

F&F is a quality brand, works well as a fashion store, but in the context of this store, it is far from the only highlight.

Fresh food offer

That honour falls to the food counters and the area devoted to ‘fresh’.

The Welsh language predominates as much in-store as it does on the road signs that become bi-lingual immediately after crossing the Severn bridge.

A big white sign stating ‘Becws’ has the word ‘Bakery’, in a slightly smaller font, directly beneath it.

What makes it striking however are the vertically suspended posts that collectively form a plain wood curtain throwing into contrast the signage placed in front of it.

And beneath all of this is the bakery counter itself, consisting of tiered shelves and a healthy looking offer of brown and white breads that wouldn’t look out of place in an artisan bakery.

Also worth noting is the area behind the counter where faux brick walls provide the setting for a rather more dense display of baked produce.

Overall, the bakery area has a distinctly Continental hypermarket look and feel (anybody who can recall Carrefour’s ‘Planet’ hypermarket experiment in Lyons will feel at home with this one), setting the tone in many ways for what follows.

Beyond bakery lie the ‘Pysgod, Dofednod a Cig’ (‘Frozen Fish, Poultry & Meat’) counters and these really do feel as if you have left South Wales and found yourself in one of the big French grocers’ outposts.

This means wood, tiles, blackboards with ‘localised’ messages, “Try our Welsh cheese with crackers & chutneys”, more bilingual directional graphics and a lot of natural daylight, lending it a market feel.

And in the middle of all of this is the fresh fruit and veg area, with equipment heights that are lower that anything else and with wood-clad mid-floor gondolas – a trait that has been one of the defining characteristics of Tesco interiors for a while now.

Beers, wines and spirits

One of the die-hard features of any hypermarket is, of course, the drinks offer (‘Diodydd’) and in this store there is a four-tiered mid-shop unit that has wooden wine crates stacked against its ends in order, perhaps, to lend a piece of French wine-cellar authenticity.

A pity that a number of these were empty on the day of visiting (and nothing had been written on the blackboards at either end of the unit), but nonetheless, it was an effective piece of dressing for what would otherwise have been a fairly standard piece of equipment.

“Tesco is always tinkering with the way in which it does things in-store and this location stands as evidence of this”

Stepping into Tesco Llansamlet, just a short-drive from downtown Swansea, is like walking into a parallel grocery universe in which the only clue about where you happen to be is provided by the Welsh language signage.

At any one time, Tesco is always tinkering with the way in which it does things in-store and this location stands as evidence of this. What sets it apart however, is the way in which a very large store has been given a makeover that is consistent throughout.

The store manager said that in the two weeks since the revamp (which took a fortnight to effect), there had been little but praise for what has been done. Small wonder, this is well worth the long trip beyond Cardiff to take a look at.