Sign 2000's Super Turnaround for Superdrug
Sign 2000 has just completed a whirlwind rebranding project for Superdrug. The Kent based architectural sign manufacturer and installer has converted more than 160 former ‘Savers’ stores into mainstream Superdrug stores in just three months.
Superdrug is one of the High Street’s best known names employing over 12,700 staff in more than 700 stores throughout the UK. Selling an average of 10,000 product lines from in excess of 2 million square feet of retail space, Superdrug serves over 4.5 million customers every week and has annual sales of more than £1 billion. Since October 2002, Superdrug has been owned by A.S. Watson & Co., one of the oldest and best-known trading companies in Asia, and itself a wholly owned subsidiary of Hong Kong based conglomerate Hutchison Whampoa.
Superdrug aims to be seen by its customers, staff and suppliers as a leading health and beauty retailer combining quality with exceptional value for money in a shopping environment that offers choice, friendliness and fun. It was decided that the ‘Savers’ brand would benefit from the company’s more modern, stylish, mainstream corporate High Street design.
Having already completed a rebranding of well over 400 main Superdrug stores, Superdrug was confident that Sign 2000 had the necessary skills, flexibility and expertise to deliver such a project on time and within budget.
“Having worked with them for some time now we were confident that Sign 2000 could meet our objectives in what was admittedly a tight time schedule,” says Jim Brown, Superdrug’s Head of Facilities
& Project Management.
Although the technical requirements of the project were well within Sign 2000’s capabilities - on occasions they were completing 5, 6 and even up to 13 sites in one week, the project represented a truly testing logistical challenge.
On being given the go-ahead for a particular site – which could be anywhere from Chatham in Kent to Buckie in the North of Scotland – Sign 2000 had to quickly survey the sites and produce design drawings utilising CAD equipment that superimposed suggested designs on digital images of the existing properties and supply full manufacturing details for sign off before any manufacturing took place.
Aluminium back tray boxes were formed by brake press folded to the required size and vinyl graphics were applied before installation teams headed out all over the country.
The logistics of installing so many sites in such a short time span did mean that Sign 2000 had to demonstrate their flexibility and ‘can-do’ attitude – sometimes at extremely short notice as Superdrug’s operational plans demanded changes to the schedule.
