I never understood the hate against check outs in the middle of the store.
My local Kmarts used to be chaotic in peak times with crowding at the front of the store because of check outs. It’s much easier to walk and navigate now.
I think the main reason for all the hate is having to show your receipt to the door person when leaving.
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I may not be qualified because I have only shopped there a couple of times but I found it strange that I had to queue up to make a purchase and then I had to queue up again on the way out to show proof of purchase. That was annoying.
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It’s not that hard?
It’s pretty standard practice in most retail stores. They only glance at my receipt briefly 80% of the time.
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Standard practice for decades long before the checkouts were ever moved.
Yeah, But people need something to complain about.
I remember going into K-Mart stores in the early 2010s that still looked like that before they adapted the current format and layout. K-Mart definitely was getting left behind until the current direction was decided upon.
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Whenever kmart now do there stores up its all at once with the new fixtures as opposed to big w who only do certain areas and the rest is just old fixtures,
I noted this the other day at BW. I think I was through the homewares area in which is was all these big white fixtures, then we went to toys and it was all old smaller fixtures.
Half the store appeared updated, the other half didn’t. Weird approach, generally as you mention Kmart and Target have a uniform look.
Perhaps it’s a costly exercise upgrading.
Kmart’s clearly a completely different store to what it used to be. People who want that sort of experience nowadays could just go to Big W.
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Kmart used to have that approach, they would update a category at a time. Eg. Toys, then Bed Bath and Kitchen, etc but the problem was by the time the next department roll out hit a lot of stores (if at all) the look and feel would change, so you ended up with stores that were a mish mash of designs and styles.
When I get a chance I’ll upload an internal article about how all stores were going to the “Series 2000” style but of course never eventuated.
I find that it’s the opposite in my local store with the checkouts in the middle. When it’s busy, that centre area gets really crowded with people going in all different directions. I preferred when they were at the front of the store.
Given that the change happened so long ago I won’t be losing any sleep over it though.
I’ve always been curious how retailers decide which stores are refurbished and which aren’t. I believe that the store’s performance and area has a lot to do with it at least for Woolworths.
There are two stores in Queensland at Victoria Point that are opposite one another. One is in a local shopping centre that has a Coles and a Kmart. The other one is in a strip of stores where there is a Bunnings a MacDonalds and other smaller stores. The Woolworths in the strip was just recently refurbished. Where the store in the shopping centre with the Coles is really showing its age. Both stores were opened within a few years of one another.
You can also tell how much budget they have to refurbish is if they replace the floor tiles or not. In some stores they have painted the store replaced the signage etc but kept the floor in tact which is showing its age. Other stores they go all in and replace everything. At one stage they also used wooden floors which never aged well at all if the store was refurbished or opened in the late 2000’s. In some stores you can see where they have had to replace the floor beams as they are a different colour and don’t match.
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For standalone stores yes.
However if the location is within a shopping centre it’s likely that refurbishments are timed to be completed in line with future centre refurbishments, or potentially a dispute with the landlord.
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From what I understand the Woolworths in the Shopping centre didn’t really get a major revamp they only spent what they had to. So this would have been to do the new Pick up area, they reconfigured the officers out the back and there may have been a few other things. A lot of other stores got similar work. The store where bunnings is got the most done to it. Complete revamping.
The Cleveland store was meant to get a major revamp but this still hasn’t happened.
I don’t know about anchor tenants but I know that for smaller tenants there is a lease clause in a lot of leases in shopping centres stating that refurbishment need to be done each X number of years (I’ve seen it as low as 3 years and as high as 6 - the norm is 5)
I know that when they negotiate a new lease they sometimes will split the cost with the shopping centre so the shopping centre retains the tenant. But obviously they would only do that for anchor tenants.
The Cleveland store is in desperate need for a renovation. Maybe it didn’t happen due to the new store opening at Redland Bay? It’s only a short drive away.
I prefer to shop at Woolworths but I go out of my way and don’t go to my closest store because it’s old. They recently renovated the store at Liechardt so go there instead. But if the closest store was renovated I would go there instead. I am sure a lot of people would go to Coles instead in the same circumstances.
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Kind of. They had this idea for a long time to do the reno to Cleveland going back as far as 2014 then they decided they wanted to do a reno of the Victoria point store (Bunnings side) then as time went on they couldn’t make up their minds on how they where going to do it.
At one point they said there may not be any reno and we will just spend and update what we have to. then just before covid, it turned out that the Victoria point store was getting a major revamp then all these other stores were only getting so much money spent on them.
The fact they built the new store at Redland bay doesn’t really come into a reno budget.
Interesting that a new look ‘Strandbags’ just opened at Perry’s Carousel shopping centre when the rebranded ‘Strand’ is just opening on the East coast.
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I saw Easter eggs on sale at the front of the Coles confectionery aisle this morning. 
They’ve been in Coles since the Thursday before Christmas! Ridic.
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