A B Fletchers, Birmingham. - where did it go?

I'm fairly sure many of us Birmingham dwellers, will know of and possibly visited A B Fletchers (Motor Factors) in town, an wonderful emporium of all things mechanical and much much more? .. to a kid it was a wonderland!

A few years ago, a company called Oscott (Auto trade Wholesaler) took the building and company over, although keeping the name, but changing the face of Fletchers forever.. with a posh new building with carpets and air conditioning!

Unfortunately, they now pandered to mostly the GTi boys, with bling, polish, ridiculously high powered audio installations, Alloy wheels, stick-on crap, but no mechanical knowledge whatsoever.

The sole redeeming feature (in my opinion) was that if you could prove an association with the motor trade, you could open a 'trade' account, and it had to be said the savings were worth while on selected ranges, Haynes 'comics' in particular, instead of being £18 or so, you could buy for £11, and the ever important AutoGlym had a serious savings.


Anyway, this week, I had a need to visit Oscott's 'version' of Fletchers.

Imagine my surprise when I pull into the car park to see it's a completely different company, a Workwear supplier, that has even had time to redevelope the store!!

As an 'Oscott' trade account holder, I was disappointed and somewhat annoyed to think that they didn't have the courtesy to write to me as a trade customer to say they were going out of business/selling-up/whatever.

So, unless any of you out there has any idea where they have moved to instaed of actually closing down, I'd be happy to hear from you.

Cheers!

Went bust i think about 4 years ago..under oscotts management...shame good place to go for bits and bobs

STUTHERANGE said:

Went bust ... about 4 years ago ... under Oscotts management...shame good place to go for bits and bobs

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Management? They did a good job then?

They lost more than 70% of the original Fletchers target market, by just serving the 'more money than sense' types.

Nevermind, ... no fear of Halfords going that way then !!

I remember Fletchers "Home of the Motorist". It was very near where I worked in the early 1990s. Tools, paint and various other sundries at pocket money prices. I used to buy big cans of cellulose thinners for cleaning the paint and varnish off furniture. While we're at it, does anyone remember a firm called K.R. Whiston which used to sell mail order nuts and bolts and wghat was quaintly called 'engineers haberdashery'? Used to be at New Mills, Stockport.