Putting Asda into context

The news over the last 10 days has hardly been encouraging for retailers with a swathe of store closures and visits to the offices of the administrators. There were however a few reasons to raise a glass of something last week in locations such as Dudley and Gateshead, among others.

These, and others like them, were where Asda had finally sounded the starting gun on its new small footprint high street format. It is perhaps pertinent to remark at this point that the opening of a supermarket is not usually the occasion for punks and pensioners to dance in the street. After all, there’s normally another large grocery store, very often belonging to the same retailer, just a few roads away.

The point about the Dudley store however is that it stands proud and new, having been converted from being a branch of Danish discounter Netto, in an area where parts of the long High Street are remarkable for the number of empty units. The store stands as a mark of faith that while things in secondary and tertiary areas things are very very tough, investment is still considered worthwhile by some.

If one were to be polite, it would probably be reasonable to say that Netto’s UK stores were never the most engaging places to shop and in the league table of Continental discounters that made the journey to this country, it came pretty close to bottom.

Asda’s new store in Dudley is not a discounter, but it is certainly not expensive and if you were aiming to take a shot at the likes of Aldi and Lidl, whose market share has recently started creeping up again, this would not be a bad effort. You know this isn’t a discounter if only by the fact that it does not boast cardboard boxes with their sides torn off that then serve as display fixtures.

What Asda’s Netto conversions seem to state is that being cheap does not necessarily have to feel so and that there is advantage to be gained by being the best in a secondary location, rather than beating the competition hands down everywhere. This is a real cause for knocking back a glass of Spumante (on offer in the Dudley High Street branch). Asda Dudley stands as evidence that success in retail is a matter of local context as much as anything else. And if you want to take a peek at what’s been done, it is reviewed on Friday.