Reasons to be smug at WH Smith

02 December 2008

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The fortunes of two of our most familiar retailers could not be more different, says Judi Bevan. While Woolworths has gone into administration, WH Smith marches ever forward

In Britain’s high streets and shopping centres, both Woolworths and WH Smith stores are packed to the rafters with glittery tat to proclaim the joys of the festive season. But while poor old Woolies has collapsed, WH Smith is marching ever forward, led by the media-shy Bodicea of retailing, Kate Swann. Even in these dire times and with airport traffic declining, the company was able to announce a 4 per cent rise in overall sales in the ten weeks to mid-November.

For most sane people, neither store is a pleasure to be in. Woolies is a garish shambles of confectionery, sparkly Christmas trees, princess costumes and DVDs, while many branches of WH Smith still resemble book and magazine warehouses at the front and depressing shelves of desultory stationery at the back. Both groups lean heavily on offering indecent amounts of cheap chocolate to lure customers through the doors and to keep them waddling back. And now the Woolworths stores have been taken into administration, their future is even more uncertain.

Woolworths and WH Smith are true dowagers of our high streets. Founded in America, Woolworths opened its first British store in Liverpool in 1909, while Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna opened a small newsagent in Little Grosvenor Street in 1792, although it was not until 1846 that an expanded chain of shops, and later railway bookstalls, began trading under the name WH Smith. Over the decades, its fortunes have waxed and waned under different managements. Private Eye famously dubbed it WH Smug for refusing to stock the magazine.

Today both groups have been operating against the bleakest retail backdrop for years, with overall October retail sales down 0.1 per cent on October 2007 – the sharpest fall for four years. Prophets of doom are already talking about the ‘worst Christmas in decades’. Only food retailers are exempt.

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