 But this morning, Wilko collapsed into administration. Its 400 shops and 12,000 employees finds themselves left to the untender mercies of PwC, who, even when they still went by the name PriceWaterhouseCooper, were not the kind to wax rhapsodical about £5.25 floor mops, 50p packs of antibacterial lemon-scented multi-surface wipes, £20 garden barbecue grills, £66 own-brand circular saws, or Lancôme-worthy £3.25 Instant Volume Ultra-Black Lash Essence-brand mascara from Germany – exclusively distributed at Wilko. I fell in love with Wilko eight years ago, when I moved into a new loft extension above the house of a friend in Hammersmith, west London, for one week a month. It wasn't just the low prices and the sheer practicality, although that was spectacular – few places will sell you both a decent microwave (£75) and good enough giftwrap to finish present preparation on the morning of Dec 24 (personal experience). There are other bargain places, such as Savers, Poundland, or Lidl, but in none of those did I get the feeling the staff were 'family', or that there was an overarching concept for unpretentious, everyday non-food shopping, as opposed to bargains the buyers had snapped up on the retail version of the financial spot market. In any Wilk){kind=link}
The high street homeware store holds a certain je ne sais quoi for one Parisienne
All of last week, I’d been hoping that some white knight would rescue Wilko, the embattled homeware high street chain founded 93 years ago in Leicester, and, until now, still family-owned. The nice people who turned Laura Ashley around in 2000, for instance. Or those strange new financial beasts, “specialist turnaround investors”, name-checked in all the business pages: Opcapita or Alteri, who sound like as yet undiscovered planets in the Alpha Centauri system – surely they need to clean their kitchens on Alpha Centauri? Fix up their spaceships with graduated screwdrivers and duct tape? Want gifts for their galaxy friends, such as £15 1.7 litre stainless steel kettles and £2.50 mugs large enough to require two PG Tips teabags?)
But this morning, Wilko collapsed into administration. Its 400 shops and 12,000 employees finds themselves left to the untender mercies of PwC, who, even when they still went by the name PriceWaterhouseCooper, were not the kind to wax rhapsodical about £5.25 floor mops, 50p packs of antibacterial lemon-scented multi-surface wipes, £20 garden barbecue grills, £66 own-brand circular saws, or Lancôme-worthy £3.25 Instant Volume Ultra-Black Lash Essence-brand mascara from Germany – exclusively distributed at Wilko.
I fell in love with Wilko eight years ago, when I moved into a new loft extension above the house of a friend in Hammersmith, west London, for one week a month. It wasn’t just the low prices and the sheer practicality, although that was spectacular – few places will sell you both a decent microwave (£75) and good enough giftwrap to finish present preparation on the morning of Dec 24 (personal experience). There are other bargain places, such as Savers, Poundland, or Lidl, but in none of those did I get the feeling the staff were “family”, or that there was an overarching concept for unpretentious, everyday non-food shopping, as opposed to bargains the buyers had snapped up on the retail version of the financial spot market.
In any Wilko I’ve shopped, I have found friendly, helpful staff, who knew exactly what they sold (and what could replace a product that was missing from the shelves). Even the queues at tills, still mostly manned by affable humans, were stress-free. You felt a real esprit de corps, quintessentially British to this Parisienne – and best of British, at that. (Also, I bet Wilko would never think of refusing service to Nigel Farage.)