The latest in a growing line of UK based supermarkets has announced its intention to up the stakes in the race to capture the pole position in the on-line food retailing market place. The company is Iceland, the one time unglamorous frozen food store that has recently reinvested itself as quite a force in the UK; it is starting its latest efforts with a multi-million pound redesign and rebranding campaign that it hopes will seal its future on the web.
The company, which has more than 700 high street shops, is repositioning itself as the driving force behind the on-line supermarket in the UK. It is launching with a new logo: iceland.co.uk - and seemingly with a new attitude having convinced even the most sceptical board members that the Internet push was a good idea.
This could indeed be quite a development. Whilst it is undoubtedly true that Tesco has captured the lion's share of the UK's Internet marketplace and Asda is running for the prime position, Iceland is quite an industry upstart. Essentially it has grown from very humble beginnings to become quite a power broker in the UK's supermarket game.
It was renowned for selling cheap frozen food but since making a vocal stand against genetically modified food and its newly announced organic food strategy, Iceland is becoming quite the high-quality food retailer - and the UK tends to like companies like that.
Iceland however isn't new to the Internet game by any means. It has been operating such a service for quite some time now and to very good success. According to some reports, the company has been experiencing growth levels of around 5,000 new customers a week, which must be causing Tesco to take note of this hard working supermarket.
