Jack's Shit - Quelle Suprise

All over  the news the other day are the reports that Tesco is entering the bargain supermarket sector to compete with the likes of Aldi and Lidl.

Great, I don't have a problem with that, the more the merrier in the sector because I bloody love Aldi and Lidl. Their food is good (as long as you pick the right things) in the main and the special buys can sometimes bring useful bargains. I equipped my boat with a decent Fire Extinguisher and a Fire blanket at a fraction of the price I'd have paid at a chandlers.

So yeah, I love the discounters.

Where I have issue with the Tesco approach is well, the approach.

With Aldi and Lidl, they have got their act together and when you visit those establishmants you don't get a cut-price feel. The tills are smart and modern, as is the shelving. The products on display do not have a cut-price look to them. The whole experience exudes quality.

Cue Tesco: My first gripe is the logo: it looks like some cheap effort from the 70's to rival KwikSave or SuperSavers. Bloody appalling and unappealing.

Remember Tesco "smart-price"? Yep, the instantly recognisable logo that marked you out as a cheapskate or on benefits. Hence it died a death.

The same applies to Jack's. Everything is in the same bloody dreary chalky red and blue. Maybe it'll appeal to someone with OCD but the appeal of the German discounters is that there looks to be variety on the shelf just like the big boys. You don't feel like you should be wearing a denim boiler suit in some chalk-blue Gaol walking through rows and rows of Jack's products.

The cleverness of the Germans is to not plaster the store with their own logos, but to invent brands and packaging that look like the premium product, but are just different enough to satisfy the lawyers. Just look at the biscuits for instance. Brilliant and clever, because it does not condemn the customer to rows of cut-price misery, but instead instills that air of variety.

Even the walls in Jack's are painted in the low-rent magnolia that anyone that rents a house will instantly recognise. Bloody depressing. As opposed to the clean, modern whites and greys in Lidl, or the modern brown/grey tones in Aldi.

The modern, uplifting  shopping experience in Aldi and Lidl could not be further from the monotonous, mediocre misery of Jack's.

My prediction is that Jack's will die a death just like Smart Price and all those other ideas that mark you out as a cheapskate.

Until the big boys recognise the essential appeal of the German discounters they will be doomed to fail on the cut-price sector. We want cut prices, but don't want to feel bad about it or be punished for it.