Argos closing and moving into Sainsbury's stores

[George 1978]

When I go to Argos these days, I do not necessarily want to go to Sainsbury's as well, even if I was reminded too many times that good food still costs less than Tesco, and that I am being invited to live life for a lot less. I really miss the "old school" Argos superstores in our High Streets and shopping centres - twice a year, going to get the 300-page catalogue (a light-coloured cover for spring and summer, and a dark-coloured cover for autumn and winter), taking it home and having a browse at everything from Elizabeth Duke jewellery and Sun Pearl garden furniture at the start of the book to the pre-Chad Valley toys and games at the end of the book, a la the And Finally... on News at Ten. And then they shopped publishing what eventually became the 1,700 page catalogue in 2020, not because of coronavirus but because of the internet we assume, but at least they still do the Christmas catalogue and end of season flyers from time to time.

Nottingham's first Argos opened in 1976 three years after the first ones had opened, (in the same shopping centre that had a Sainsbury's there, ironically enough), with a second "Superstore" branch in 1991. The first one closed in 2018 (but then again, the shopping centre it was in has been closed for a while anyway); and the second one had closed at the start of this year to move into a Sainsbury's store a mile and a half away. I am not a really Sainsbury's customer (for I have a Tesco Clubcard in my wallet, not to mention an Iceland one as well), and so I have been concerned that Argos moving into Sainsbury's would put me and others off shopping there. Nottingham City Centre no longer has a branch of Argos in NG1-land for the first time in 47 years and I feel that it really is the end of an era.

Since the actual catalogues had stopped being published, I really miss the laminated pages of the catalogue (which I assumed they did to make the book look as it had more pages than usual such as over 1,000 of them in order to make the catalogue exciting). This was in the days of just the "300 pages per-catalogue" era of the 1980s and not the later over one and a half thousand pages era, 1990s onwards. And of course the Customer Selection Form inside the book (a blank piece of paper will do, surely?) and a lovely Bookie pen-sized writing implement, (later a pencil), to write it down with. The seven digit (three digit prefix at the beginning) item numbers copied from the main book and written down onto the form. Five minutes later, a Julie Peasgood-alike voiceover invites us via the store: "Item number 387, to your collection point, please". It was like that in the 2000s in any case.

My personal opinion is that Argos stores should still remain independent in our High Streets and shopping centres (even if Sainsbury's do own them these days). If it ain't broke, then don't mess around with it. I would hate it if Boots or any other retailer would be a "shop within a shop" - besides, if I was a visitor to that town or city and trying to find out where the nearest branch of that store is, then I could easily have overlooked it and have wasted my time. I prefer the Argos stores to be stand-alone shops as that was the way they were supposed to be when the late Richard Tompkins founded them over half a century ago - what would have they been called had Tompkins not been on holiday in the Greek city of Argos at the time, and came up with the idea directly translated from the old Green Shield Stamps format? Cash instead of stamps, and it took until 1972 to come up with the idea...

I do have some great memories of shopping at Argos - in 1995 I saw a couple of girls who were in my class at school just happened to be shopping in there when I was there (hence the "old school" part that I was talking about), nearly a couple of years after I had left school. In the weeks before Christmas I used to have so much fun with Christmas shopping and buy things for the nephews such as the "real thing" Sir Killalot toy from Robot Wars in 2001 - it seemed that I got the wrong item and had to return it the following day. My final visit to Argos before they closed down before Christmas was to get some C60 cassette tapes (remember them?) for some Radio 4 recording over Christmas and New Year. And some debacle with a box that just happened to be ripped when I had tried to open it to test the product out so that I could know whether it would be working properly or was compatible with what I had home, which it was was not on both counts - I even contacted the CEO at the time.

What was their mid to late 1980s slogan? - "It's so easy". Well, it would have been "so easy" had they not hidden them inside Sainsbury's stores. "It's so annoying" should be their slogan now.

[batman]

It's all down to folk ordering goods online.

It's a wonder high street stores are even still in existence.

[George 1978]

You are right, Batman, but it is still a travesty that traditions that I have grown up with from the 1980s onwards have died due to technology like the Internet taking its place.

[80sChav]

I thought all had moved in or if not closed down tbh .... it is sad to be fair though,. almost like Littlewoods aquiring Index in the late 90s/early 00s or whebever this happened

Yet another inditement of "everything going in one place" and most things useing that indvidual-ness

[George 1978]

Littlewoods' Catalogue Shop as it was then called, was founded in Liverpool in 1985, and was an official rival to Argos - the difference was that Littlewoods was obviously in the mail order catalogue business and so it was a sideways move to the High Street.

I was in attendance as a nearly nine year old when the Nottingham branch of The Catalogue Shop, later to change its name to Index around a year or two later (and Argos later owned the URL that they had). They got local lad Leslie Crowther himself to open it and sign autographs - one of the few (and the first) time that I had met someone who only seemed to appear on TV. It closed in 2005 when the others did - it was a stand alone shop, and inside the Nottingham Littlewoods, there was a branch of Iceland which made me think that there was a connection between the two companies.

[Richard1978]

I remember the Index in Stockport became an Argos as it was better placed than the existing Argos shop.

[George 1978]

The main problem was that in Nottingham, Argos and Index was so close to each other; Argos in the now-developed former Broad Marsh Centre and Index on Lister Gate, less than five minutes walk away - it would have been a bit daft for Index to become another Argos when two of them were already in Nottingham City Centre. I assume in most cities that Index became Argos in areas where the nearest Argos was a reasonable distance away.