EL SEGUNDO, Calif. -- Targeting the time-starved U.S. grocery shopper, British supermarket giant Tesco has registered a logo design for its American venture that combines a clock facesignaling conveniencewith an apple stem, reflecting the stores' planned focus on prepared meals and salads.
Citing trademark documents filed with the U.S. Patent &Trademark Office, The Financial Times suggests that Tesco will not attempt to build its brand identity in the United States around its own name.
While Tesco's ubiquitous stores have [image-nocss] made the world's fifth largest retailer a household name in the U.K., it has virtually no brand recognition in the United States, the report said.
Whatever name they chose, they would have been building a brand from scratch in the U.S., Darrell Rigby, senior retail partner at consultancy Bain & Co., told the Times. The Tesco brand really doesn't mean much to U.S. consumers.
Instead, it will set out to position itself around the fresh & easy brand, which it seems likely to use not only for what it calls its neighborhood market stores, but also for the range of own-label packaged goods and prepared foods that it plans to stock, said the newspaper.
The logos filed with the trademarks authority includes a version in shades of green, rather than the red, white and blue associated with the Tesco name, created in 1924 from the name of Jack Cohen, its founder, and TE Stockwell, his tea supplier. The logo also uses a large, simple, lower-case font, reflecting a stress on simplicity, which is part of the overall brand message, the report said.
Tesco documents, said the paper, have indicated that the retailer wants the stores to be identified as a Fresh & Easy place to shop where we keep things simple. The hands of the fresh & easy clock are set at around five minutes past fourpointing the store at customers on their way home from work, who are looking to pick up items that might supplement a weekly or two weekly trip to a major supermarket or discount store.
Allen Adamson of brand consultants Landor Associates told the paper that the name is direct and clear and goes right to the end benefit, that it's easy and it is fresh, and that is the right message for the shopper. But he said he was less impressed by the clock image. After all, I might want fresh and easy at 10 in the morning.
The retailer is placing its 15,000-sq. ft. storesat least half the size of most U.S. supermarketsclose to residential areas, with a strong emphasis on prepared meals and salads.
Tesco, with U.S. headquarters in El Segundo, Calif., has said it will open its first stores in the late summer of 2007 around Los Angeles, San Diego, Las Vegas and the Phoenix area. It has already applied for beer and wine licenses for 32 stores around Phoenix, Los Angeles and Las Vegas, with locations only a few miles apart, and it has reviewed approximately 300 possible store sites.
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