Blimey, the news is alive with this story this morning. Dixons Retail and Carphone Warehouse are set to merge in a deal worth £3.8bn.
It's an interesting strategy. I think the Dixons group has been struggling for some time with confusing messages and brand identity.
We used to have a Currys Megastore and a large PC world next door to each other which competed with each other on price, and the Currys store used to stock loads of PC's, with PC world stocking loads of TV's. Never made any sense. Then someone had the genius idea of merging the 2 stores into one building and calling it Currys PC World
With the Dixons Hight Street brand, these seem to have their own identity as Camera, gadget and technology shops, but competition from online retailers sealed their fate.
The new group apparently is going to be called Dixons Carphone. The concept is very clever, technology is evolving all the time, TV's are now smart devices, this trend will move into all white goods and home appliances, so combining the last major High Street white-goods provider with a phone company makes sense.
But is it me, but from a marketing point of view, aren't some of these names and brands sounding obsolete?
PC World has outgrown it's original name, it should be mobile device or tablet world Our new combined Currys and PC world is really just a large Currys Store. One ones side are IT gadgets and computers, on the other hoovers and fridges. I think having all the PC World sign-age up over the IT side of the shop is pointless, and if you talk to one of the sales guys, they'll happily flip between a laptop and walk you over to a stereo if that's what you are interested in.
Locally, everyone I know just calls it Currys. What about carphone warehouse? Carphone brings mental images of the 1990's and car boot installations.
You'd think they would just stick with a Generic recognisable brand name and simply just have Currys Stores. Maybe Curry Mega stores or local ones depending on location and size, but at least the name is timeless and crosses multiple markets.
Or just call all the stores Dixons again