Co-op to concentrate on food after closure of Homemaker
FOOD will be the Channel Island’s Co-operative Society’s main focus from now on, says chief operating officer Mark Cox.
The society announced last week that it was to close its Homemaker store at Lowlands in March.
The move has put 17 jobs at risk.
Mr Cox said the decision to close Homemaker had been taken two weeks ago and staff had been informed about the situation 10 days ago.
‘We have offered every one of them the chance to stay with us, but we are still at the early stages,’ he said, when asked how many of the staff could stay with the company after the closure.
The company had planned to open a smaller Homemaker on the Bridge, but that idea was dropped.
‘We looked at a number of opportunities, like relocating,’ Mr Cox said.
‘But we could not make it work. Food is our core offering going forward.’
Some smaller homeware items will still be available at the St Martin’s and St Sampson’s Grand Marche stores.
The future of the building is also not clear. Mr Cox said they were unlikely to move forward with the current planning application to demolish the structure to make way for two new retail units. But he did confirm they planned to keep the site commercial.
‘We are looking at a number of options,’ he said.’But it is too early to say what we are looking at.’
Options could include retail or warehousing.
One of the reasons for the Guernsey closure was that the Jersey Homemaker closed in 2016, which meant the Co-op lost the economy of scale when ordering goods. The Jersey site was taken over by homeware store Dunelm.
Mr Cox said they had not entered into any discussions with any businesses to take on the Guernsey site yet.
All existing orders will be honoured and new orders can be taken, for now. Mr Cox said there was no date for last orders yet. There is also no fixed date for when the store will close its doors next year.
