Dickies Discount Store, on The Ridge

[cassisa1]

Does anyone remember a shop called Dickies Discount Store, which was on The Ridge about 35 to 40 years ago? It was the first of it's kind in this area and was very popular. It was quite basic but the prices were very cheap. I seem to remember the staff wearing red and white uniforms. I have searched the Internet but can’t find any reference to it anywhere. Can anyone help?

[Richard]

Hello cassisa1,

Forgive my ignorance - I don't go back that far in Hastings, but what was the shop selling exactly?
Do you mean a type of Woolworths?
"Store" suggest an American origin perhaps?

[Derek Jempson]

Dickie's Discount was a kind of cut-price food store - something similar to Lidl, or Aldi, but much less organised, refined and sophisticated. Inside, it resembled a warehouse rather than a supermarket, with goods in the original cardboard boxes stacked high on large, open shelving. The floor was often littered with discarded wrapping material. Its big advantage was cheapness - I lived in the area at the time, and it was the main source of groceries and the like for my family. The store, if I remember correctly was on the site of the present-day timber merchant (Aylesford?). I suppose you could say that Dickie's followed the early Tesco motto, "Pile it high, sell it cheap".

[Geoff]

This is the first I have heard of Dickies Discount. Was it trade only (like Bookers) or could anyone shop there? I remember that the right hand building of the current Alsfords timber site was an off-licence not so long (Threshers I think).

Alsfords Timber

[Derek Jempson]

It was open to all, not just trade. Looking at your photo Geoff, and from what I can remember of Dickie's, the present day Alsford building was adapted from the original Dickie's building and that in its turn might have been adapted from something else - I doubt if it was purpose-built.

[malagoo]

Does anyone remember a shop called Dickies Discount Store, which was on The Ridge about 35 to 40 years ago? It was the first of it's kind in this area and was very popular. It was quite basic but the prices were very cheap. I seem to remember the staff wearing red and white uniforms. I have searched the Internet but can’t find any reference to it anywhere. Can anyone help?

I remember it well because my girlfriend at the time worked there. You are quite right that the shop was on the Alsford timber site on the Ridge. I'm not sure when it finally shut it's doors, but she worked there around 1977.

[carol wright]

hi i remember Dickies discount on the ridge ,i worked there when i was 17 years old ,in 1980 x

[Hairygit]

Dickie's Discount, remember it well, even down to the really dodgy T. V. advert, so I assume there must have been a few of them around to justify T.V. advertising. When the store eventually closed, it stood empty for a while, the Hastings Motorcycles moved in there from Ore village, and tried making a bike supermarket out of it, with drinks machines, armchairs, and videogames to occupy children while dad got the high pressure sales garb from the salesman, Chris Tibbles was the main salesman. They also moved their workshops and parts department from Hughenden Road there as well. Can't be sure what happened, but after a couple of years they moved back to the original shop in Old London Road in the village.

[Andrew_in_Wales]

I have just come across this thread - rather late in the day. I was manager at Dickies Discount on the Ridge for a time in the late 1970s after managing their other stores in Havant and Portsmouth. The building was originally a bus depot and then a garage - Moons Motors - and I remember Mr Moon visiting as landlord and he was not very happy at the changes and the state of his building. I am amazed to see from Google that the building is still there and recognisable some 45 years later.

Dickies was a very basic "Pile it High - Sell it Cheap" food store - similar to Kwik-Save. I recall unloading by hand 6 and 10 ton deliveries of granulated sugar from Tate & Lyle. We had no fork-lift trucks in those days. There was also a small Roberts Off-licence adjacent on the forecourt outside selling drink and cigarettes .

Due to financial troubles, Dickies and it's parent company, Peek, Winch & Tod, had gone into receivership and were sold to other companies with this store being renamed Dee Discount and the red uniforms and logo changed to a yellow format. I left shortly afterwards. I still have the red plastic Dickie bird that came from the shopfront hanging up in my house.

The Dickie bird and it's "Cheep-Cheep" slogan still remind me of good days many years ago.