Britons Buying In to Warehouse Stores : Retail: One reports about 1,000 new members a week. Some find the two heavily advertised outlets a threat.

Warehouse-style stores, popular in the United States, say they are finding ready acceptance with customers in Britain.

A new low-price warehouse store, one of only two of its kind so far in Britain, is adding members at the rate of 1,000 a week and now has 23,800 people signed up, the British company that runs the store said recently.

Wholesale retail company Nurdin & Peacock Plc opened its Cargo Club warehouse store in a south London suburb in March, the first British competitor to the U.S. Costco Corp.’s warehouse outlet, which opened late last year east of London.

Both clubs opened in a blaze of publicity, threatening already recession-battered traditional retailers with their U.S.-style shopping.

Members pay a membership fee, $36.87 in the case of Cargo Club, and benefit from shopping in bulk at reduced prices on a range of goods from food to television sets.

“We are pleased to say that through advertising, television and radio, membership numbers are increasing every day,” N&P;’s managing director David Poole told a news conference. Poole said members could save 15% on food, 25% on general merchandise and $147 on televisions.

The group earlier reported a pretax profit for the year ended Dec. 31 of $47.3 million, just up on 1992’s $44.5 million. Revenues fell 3% to $2.07 billion.

Nurdin is in the process of converting its core traditional cash-and-carry business to a new format that offers a wider range to its customers, independent shop operators. Opening the Cargo Club is part of this diversification, forced by the drastic decline in the number of independents.

The group has ambitious plans for its Cargo Club operation, despite some worries that U.S.-style shopping might not translate very well to Britain. N&P;’s warehouse store has tried to differentiate itself from Costco by focusing on the retailer angle with smaller minimum pack sizes.

Poole said the group’s aim for the south London warehouse store is membership of 60,000. It will open a second store in central England in the summer and a third one in the southwest English town of Bristol in the winter.

Another store is planned for northwest England next year with the aim being to have 30 in place by the end of the decade.

But Poole said Cargo Club had come up against reluctance by some manufacturers to let it stock their products. He said Nurdin had been forced to complain to the British regulatory body, the Office of Fair Trading, over the refusal by Japanese electronics companies to sell it their televisions.