glad I left when I did! (I've worked at both stores!).
It was bound to happen a some point
The Outdoor Group comprises
Millets; ...
Blacks Outdoors; Free Spirit; and Mambo.
When I worked at Blacks they always had problems with a leaky roof and storage issues, the staff toilet, food area, and "rest area"(which was a chair/table) was squeezed into about 10ft square at the back of the store room! there was a lot of pressure to sell which always made me feel uneasy.
Whilst I worked there for about 8 months 7 people joined and left the job for reasons I can't go into on a public site, I left for the same reason!(and so did some customers).
To me
Blacks seemed to be "Money Money" where as
Outdoors"The scout shop" seemed to be "Customer Customer"
Outdoors"The scout shop" was taken over by "The Outdoor Group" several years ago, and became Millets. when I worked there (after leaving blacks) It was a great place we had free reign to do our own displays, we sold proper Mountain gear, climbing gear,and all of the scout paraphanalia.
The public trusted our opinion probably because of the scout link and we weren't a big company.
We loved working there, we very much looked down on "Millets" as "poor quality and no knowledge store"
just before I left(2003) things were changing for the worse, loads of rules and regs came in, (like playing Christmas music on a loop, and using huge posters rather than personalised displays) and it seemed to loose it's identity.
They always had problems with the building basically because it was old, disabled people could not get up/downstairs so they couldn't compete with better accessed stores.
when they became Millets they lost the 1st floor (womens clothing/scouts), which has since been closed to the public and a small side room dedicated to sleeping equipment. a sad loss!
what's worse is the origional and in my opinion
the worst camping shop...
:AR15firin
Millets has stayed! untill now
lets hope a better company can take it's place!
just as a side issue, Please for the sake of small mountain sports shop business
take a look in Venture sport!
www.Venturesport.co.uk (01603 613378) westlegate, Norwich.
(I don't work there, I just think they deserve to survive!)
