Category: Shops & Shopping

Radio Rentals

I am old enough, just, to remember when technology was a repairable commodity and not just a collection of cheap and easily replaceable items. Seeing as the TV plays such a big part in my childhood memories I should probably reflect on where those early TV sets came from, they weren’t ours but rented from Radio Rentals (and later Granada).

In the modern world just about every bit of technology is easily replaced, usually before it goes wrong, technology is even designed to become obsolete before the packet has been opened. So in the modern world the thought that you might actually rent, rather than own your tech seems completely out of touch. Although that said, I bet a lot of tech is purchased on credit which is just about the same thing.

The outside of an actual Radio Rentals shop.

Radio Rentals was the shop where we got our TV sets from, I remember our new set arriving in the late eighties. A very sleek square set complete with integrated stand with room for a video recorder. The TV was branded Baird which was a brand owned by Radio Rentals themselves. I’ve tried in vein to find a picture of a similar set – or even the remote control with no luck.

As for Radio Rentals itself, it was a showroom. You’d go into the shop and look at what was on offer but your set would be delivered separately – it wasn’t in store to take home that day, we only ever rented TV sets but I would imagine similar was true for the other equipment they rented out.

By the 1990s people were renting far less and the whole rental model was fast going out of fashion. At some point in the mid-90s our Baird set gave up the ghost. The TV repairman came – another relic of a bygone time – and we were left with a replacement set, not a new model but reconditioned. This one though was branded as a Granada Set.

I tried in vein to locate the sleek ‘Baird’ set we had but there is no tracy anywhere of a photo, I’m fairly sure its predecessor looked like one of these.

Granada were a well known TV company in the North West of England, they also owned service stations and of course a rental firm which was rival to Radio Rentals. The two companies did eventually merge – although this was much later than when we got our replacement set. I’m not sure of the logistics of it, perhaps we switched to Granada when the Baird gave up, or maybe Granada took on the business of Radio Rentals locally.

Either way that Granada set ended up being ours permanently. It wasn’t the greatest set in the world, it didn’t come with a stand resulting in a dramatic scramble to rearrange the living room so there was somewhere to place the TV. It also had a fault which was fixed with the classic slap on top of the set to fix.

At this point with most of my posts I ask the question, would it ever come back. The reality is if you want, or need as is more likely the case, to rent then you can still find places that will – usually with terrible credit agreements and otherwise, things are more affordable or can be bought with your flexible friend. The old world of rental shops is long gone now.

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Kwik Save

Discount Supermarket, 1967-2007

Kwik Save with its quirky spelling and cheap shelving was one of the first ‘discount’ supermarkets in the UK. It was cheap and cheerful but is remembered by me mainly for a few quirks with its stores when compared to other supermarkets of the era.

These days when you think of discount supermarkets its Aldi and Lidl that have been leading the way for over a decade. But when I was entering the world Kwik Save was the equivalent. In actual fact when Kwik Save was founded in the late 60s it drew a lot of inspiration from Aldi and its business operations.

Kwik Save stores generally had a smaller floor plan than other supermarkets (even the smaller scale high street supermarkets of the 80s and early 90s). They also had warehouse style shelving which to me as a toddler look like it towered high above me but even at that tender age, I was able to tell was distinctly cheaper than any other shop used.

The No Frills own label brand that you wouldn’t be seen dead with.

The other quirks of shopping in Kwik Save included the Liquor Save off-licence which was a separate store within a store complete with separate doors – I presume that was largely due to licencing laws preventing sales of alcohol at certain times.

Kwik Save also had one of the first cheapo own brands, coming before even Tesco Value was a thing. In plan packaging with a stencil typeface, if you saw someone with a ‘No Frills’ packet of crisps in their Lunchbox at school they certainly got judged.

I also remember that you had to pay for carrier bags, I think around 2p a time. This was long before that became standard practice and, of course, the law to do so.

My own fondest memory of shopping in Kwik Save was the walk through chiller. You pushed your trolley in one side picked what you wanted and walked out the other. Probably done to cut costs but just a massive novelty for me.

The classic Kwik Save bag that you had to pay for.

While having a ‘No Frills’ product might have carried a stigma in the playground I don’t remember the simple fact you might be seen shopping in there having any such mark attached, unlike Netto which you absolutely wanted to have no association with whatsoever.

KwikSave remained strong into the 90s but as the bigger supermarkets brought in their own budget ranges the business began to struggle and eventually merged with Sommerfield (remember them?). The plan was to turn them all into Sommerfields but they realised the majority of the stores were cheap and tacky so they didn’t bother eventually selling off Kwik Save once again.

Everything in this photo screams a bygone age of retail. The uniform, the tannoy microphone, the brush font on the signs – so dated now!

The last hurrah came in the early 2000s by which point Netto had been seen off and Aldi and Lidl were getting their feet under the table. Kwik Save won’t be back (although the brand was revived for used by convenience stores) and it won’t be missed as there are plenty of alternatives for discount groceries thesedays.

As for the novelty of the big walk-in Fridge – once you have worked in retail and had to move stock into and out of massive chillers, that novelty wears off quickly!

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Woolworths

General Retailer, 1909 – 2009

Everybody (who is old enough) will remember Woolworths, or Woolies as it was better known. Originating in America, for some reason as a nation we took the shop to our hearts until the while thing went bankrupt about 15 years ago and it was very sad to see it go.

As this is a blog concerning my memories I’ll jump right in to the Woolworth’s story at the point which I enter the world, the 1980s. At this point Woolworths UK business had become independent and the shops rationalised what they sold which as I remember was Music and Video, Sweets, Toys, Homeware and Children’s Clothes.

My local Woolworths store was a decent size considering it was located not even within a town centre but the shopping precinct built alongside the housing estate on which I lived. By its eclectic nature if you were after something non-food then Woolies would likely be the place you went.

Woolworths' Leigh Park branch shown with closing down banners in windows pictured on a dark night.
The actual local branch of Woolies I talk about in my post.

Woolworths was particularly good as a shop for buying presents the variety of what it sold meant you were likely to find something decent for everyone. So naturally everyone received at least one present from Woolies every Christmas.

Woolies also made a success of music and video, succeeding where the traditional record shops really struggled. Someone at Woolies must have recognised that the VHS tape and later the DVD would be strong sellers and I remember that the range in even the smallest stores was always huge. Back then even the largest supermarkets usually only stocked a very limited range of CDs and videos.

Woolie the sheep and Worth the dog from the last years of the companies existence.
Woolie and Worth the genius mascots from the final years of Woolworths.

Home video was so important that the company got into distribution which, ultimately resulted in its downfall. As MP3s took the music sales away and cheap DVDs that could be bought from the likes of Amazon meant there wasn’t much future for that core part of what Woolworths did by this point. At the same time the cheap and cheerful shops like Poundland were eating into their sales. Woolies was inevitably doomed.

I got this far and I haven’t even mentioned the thing most people think of when they think of Woolworths but not so for me. Perhaps I wasn’t allowed pick and mix all that often I’m not sure, I do remember the variety of sweets that spanned a plastic ‘island’ but my fond memories are based elsewhere.

A mid-90s Woolworth's Pick 'n' Mix counter.
The obligatory picture of the Pick ‘n’ Mix display.

When I was small I had my fair range of Ladybird clothes and plenty of Woolworths stationary. But when I came of age it was Woolworths where I went for CDs, DVDs and some Playstation games during my brief attempt at being a gamer. I’m even fairly sure that I got my Nokia 3330 mobile phone from Woolies just as everybody started getting connected.

By the time Woolworths went under I had moved away and the one thing that strikes me is in both the area I grew up in and London, there were Woolies everywhere, even in areas where there was just a small parade of shops, that’s probably why the nation held Woolies so close to their hearts and also probably why the business ultimately failed.

Every so often there are news reports (and once even a full blown hoax) that Woolworths could be returning – but it won’t. A combination of cheap shops like Poundland, Home Bargains and B&M have seen off any chance of that. In recent years Wilko largely filled the same void in town centres but that company too has suffered a similar fate as Woolies.

More about Woolworths:
Woolworths Museum
Woolworths Buildings: Then and Now

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The Video Shop

This must surely be a memory for any 90s child. Video players meant that you could choose what you want to watch rather than relying on TV channels.

We got our first video recorder quite late, around late 1993. It wasn’t even ours outright but hired from Radio Rentals, just as the TV set was. Naturally lots of tv was recorded and we bought some video tapes from Woolies.

But the best thing for me was going to the video shop, typically my parents would choose what they wanted and I would get to choose a video from the children’s section.

While Blockbuster will be the video shop everyone always remembers, locally we had an independent video shop and a Ritz video shop.

As for the videos, while there were a lot of big name films, just like Netflix today, there was a large amount of material you’d never heard of some would be good but most wouldn’t.

It was pretty cool as a kid to just go to a shop and choose something from a shelf and walk out without paying – obviously my Dad did but I didn’t really get that at the time.

In later years video games were avaliable to rent. I did this one time only when I had a PlayStation. I renteded Worms, I progressed so far then the game crashed and I never bothered to try again.

The notion of video shops is frozen in time in the 1990s. The specially designed plastic shelving, the large old-school TVs playing videos on repeat and the idea of using physical media are a world away from today.

They look happy to work in a Ritz video shop.

By the time DVD was becoming popular the video rental shops were closing (bar Blockbuster), the idea of renting didn’t go away entirely but the experience was far different.

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When out of town shopping was a big event

The above photo is of a local co-op Hypermarket, long gone, the site now occupied by a big Asda a common sight up and down the country but back when I was a kid a visit to the Hypermarket was a special event.

Although we lived fairly close to the Hypermarket generally the shopping was done in the much smaller Tesco (these days a Tesco Metro to give you a sense of the scale). A trip to the Hypermarket was usually for a special occasion.

They don’t make these when they open up the latest Tesco Extra thesedays.

Inside the store seems huge you’d enter through a clothing department, there was even a carpet showroom at the back of the store. In later years they added a Morrisons style Market Street complete with fake windows above the ‘shops’.

Best of all there was a restaurant, park up the trolley and then we’d go in for a snack or a light lunch. The best seats were next to the fish tanks that were built into the wall.

All of this added to the feeling that this shopping trip was an event and not just yet another trawl round the shops. Best of all when you got through the checkouts there was the ice cream counter. Sweet memories.

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