22 July 2010
Coronation Street effect causes business boom for Cousins
A starring spot on Coronation Street has led to a business boom for Cousins Furniture as Corrie fans flocked to its stores in Manchester and Birmingham last weekend.
All three stores, in Dudley, Tyseley and Salford, were flooded by Coronation Street fans last weekend after the company’s Salford store was featured in Wednesday and Thursday’s shows last week.
One person even snapped up a £6,000 Tokyo sofa at the Manchester store after it appeared on the show.
The Salford store was used by Coronation Street as a set in an episode with John Stape (Graeme Hawley) masquerading as a member of staff in a high end furniture store.
The Street’s troublemaking Windass family visit the store and cause chaos, testing all of the furniture in the store and risking exposing John’s lies.
Cousins managing director Robert Shotton, a lifelong Coronation Street fan, said the filming had not only been good fun, it had also been very good for business.
“Featuring on Coronation Street has been a brilliant opportunity for all three stores, as since the episodes aired and a Coronation Street fan site revealed where they were filmed, hundreds of fans have visited all three stores,” he said.
“We’ve seen a real uplift in sales as a result, not just from fans who have come in and spent thousands but from the cast and crew who filmed at the store and used the opportunity to do some shopping.
“It was also a dream come true for me as I am a huge Coronation Street fan and rarely miss an episode.”
The biggest item sold this weekend was a Tokyo sofa corner unit, which retails for £6,000 and featured in several scenes with Eddie and Anna Windass.
Cousins, which was established 25 years ago by Robert and his cousins William and Edward, has a long term connection with Coronation Street, as Jack and Vera Duckworth opened the Dudley store in 1976 and Leanne Battersby (Jane Danson) and Frankie Baldwin (Debra Stephenson) opened the Manchester store in 2005.
Cousins is a family run business which launched in Tyesley in Birmingham in 1985 with 15 staff. It now has three stores in Manchester and the West Midlands employing 140 staff with a multi million pound turnover.