All 420 Topaz filling stations in Ireland will be re-branded to “Circle K” at a cost of a mad EUR 20mio. There is absolutely no need to move away from the well established “Topaz” brand in Ireland and in my opinion the new “Circle K” brand looks much cheaper than the Topaz brand, which makes the move even more odd.
Here is a picture of a Topaz station and here is one of a Circle K filling station in the USA.
But a LOT has happened with Topaz recently. Topaz was owned by Denis O’Brien and in 2015 he sold it to the Canadian company Couche-Tard, which has something like 6500 filling stations in North America and 1500 other stores and also is operating convenience stores and/or filling stations in Norway, Sweden, Denmark, Poland, Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania, Russia, Japan, Hong Kong, China, Indonesia and Mexico.
The global Circle K stores and filling stations is the reason why it was decided to bring the Irish brand in line with the global branding. But remember that Topaz only recently re-branded all Esso filling stations to Topaz and now another rebrand is happening. 20mio to make your brand look cheaper than before. Mad! You might also remember that Topaz was some while back Statoil and Shell, so a lot of rebrands and changes. :-O
