nickshanagher

Last Friday I visited my local Aldi for the first time and it was a dispiriting experience. Wide aisles, half empty shelves, a scattering of customers, few staff, and bizarre space planning. This is not the future of retailing. Most of the shoppers there were seeking to buy as much protein as possible for the smallest possible price. Earlier, I had visited BUYology, which occupied a former DIY shed near the centre of Reading. There were plenty of bargains, including multipacks of Walkers crisps for 35p - all marked OOD or out of date. "Zoom in on microscopic prices," it says. In the City pages of the FT there is much admiration for Poundland, which with 347 UK stores, almost one for every day of the year, is now planning to open six Dealz shops in Ireland - avoiding the Euroland name that the FT had taken a shine to! "But," it warns " the company is also losing its fixed price promise, and with that goes some of the simplicity that helps to bring the punt...