Costcutter Hockley in Essex marked the launch of its new premium look store at a fun day celebration with the local community, while also raising money for Little Havens Hospice.

The store, which was devastated by a fire in 2010, unveiled its new look on March 19 on an occasion marked with plenty of celebrations from customers who joined in with activities including a caricaturist and a raffle.

Raffle entrants were given the chance to win tickets to the World Superbike Grand Prix and the Red Bull Air Race, with prizes donated by Monster Energy and Red Bull respectively. Funds raised by raffle ticket sales were donated to the Little Havens Hospice, which the store has raised over £4,000 for over the last year.

Visitors were also provided with free tasters, with Rollover Hotdogs supplying a Hotdog cart and Tchibo coffee and Country Choice providing free coffees for the day.

Peter Woods, owner of Costcutter Hockley, said turnover was already up by 15%, even though the store has not been expanded in size.

“We felt it time to freshen up the look of the store, it is an affluent area so we decided to take it a step further and change to Premium Costcutter black,” he told C-Store. “We had a slight remodel of the store inside, and added a double full height promotion bay to the front isle, we also introduced Rollover Hotdogs and extended our food to go section.

“We did all this without closing at any time. Costcutter were fantastic from start to finish, from development to implementation providing merchandisers and extra help whenever we needed it. We then started a range review and cut out some of the slower selling lines and brought in some new products. We have already seen an upturn in turnover of 15% and have had some excellent feedback from the public. The store is still the same size, however by moving things around we have created an extra 18 linear metres of shelf space.

“We also added three 46 inch high bright video screens to the shopfront so that during the rush hour and the traffic creeps past the shop up to the roundabout ahead, this gives the passing motorist full animated views of our promotions. We chose a company called AdgenTV for our software solution and in the first week of having the screens fitted we had sold our normal three week stockholding of the promotions advertised on the screens so an instant success for us.”

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