Who is TG Jones?

 

The most lowkey takeover in recent retail history

 It may have taken a while for people to notice but a significant though unobtrusive change has been occurring throughout high streets in the UK. A familiar store remains open but look up and its name has changed. WH Smith is now TG Jones. You’d be forgiven for not noticing. The blue and white colour scheme of the sign remains the same, the stores untouched by any makeover. Yet those signs have been quietly changed- I don’t know when, I’ve yet to see it actually happening – in recent weeks. You’ll still find WH Smiths in airports and railway stations because the brand has been split in two, the high street shops sold off. It’s the end of an era though in other ways a return to how things started.

 

The deal slipped through when news was busy so didn’t even make the main headlines. The story revealed just how much the company relied on its travel retail stores in airports and railways stations which comprise 75% of its revenue and 85% of its profits. The rest of the business- the high street operation - was sold to Modella Capital on 30 June though the original value of £76 million was reduced to £40 million and as part of the deal the name of these stores would need to be changed so the moniker TG Jones was chosen.

The new owners have so far made no attempt to initiate a radical makeover or establish a new identity for the stores, surely the first act of a change of owner and name? They haven’t even tried to pretend there was a real TG Jones to give the change some interesting aspect. Remember when the makers of Mr Kipling cakes made us think for decades there really was a Mr Kipling, an avuncular character who made all the exceedingly good cakes himself? No such character here, the new name was selected because they thought it seemed similar to that of WH Smith. Even though “Smiths” rolls off the tongue a little easier than “Joneses”. I expect over time- if it has a lot of time- people will start calling it TGs.

Of course there was a real WH Smith. William Henry Smith, born on 24 June 1825, by an unfortunate coincidence two hundred years to the month before the sale took place. He expanded the family booksellers initially to railway stations which I suppose lines up with where they have now retreated back to. He later became an MP and First Lord of the Admiralty despite never having been in the Navy and is believed to have inspired a character from HMS Pinafore. Thomas Gerard Jones could be a juggler and tap dancer who lives in Northampton. Or the inventor of the food mixer. I mean would it have been too much to have invented someone to front the brand? Better still to have come up with a name that reflects more modern times like The Everything Shop. If they’d wanted to be cheeky they could have called themselves Booksmiths. TG Jones just makes the shop instantly less interesting as it takes away the legacy name yet doesn’t refresh the brand at all.

 All of the issues they were having when called WH Smith are still there so to make it work Modella need to do something other than alter the name. Are there areas they could move into? What parts of the business could be expanded? At present while they stock books they don’t have enough to seriously compete with Waterstones. The current offer replicates the travel shops which specialise in impulse purchases whereas people go into a proper bookshop to browse. The new owners need to differentiate from those travel shops to focus on the customers they do have and could add.

For decades Smiths was more than just a shop, it became a focal point of the city centre. Countless times people would meet “at Smiths” or “outside Smiths” and in the case of the latter would almost always then go into the shop. The Smiths we had in the city centre at its peak was expansive. A long row of magazines down one wall, stationary galore on the other side of the shop. At the back a record shop the size of, well, a record shop selling CDs, videos, later DVDs and assorted headphones etc. Downstairs a vast bookshop the same dimensions as your average Waterstones. They even sold sweets and canned drinks. It was a place you might spend some time, a place for slow or rainy days. This sounds like an odd thing to say about a large city but it was a cornerstone of the community. Other retailers would come and go but Smiths was always there.

 The contraction began when the floor fell out of the physical media market. The record shop shrank to some shelves and then vanished altogether. The confectionary offer increased but then they moved to a smaller premises into which a post office was also incorporated. Many people stopped going in, even those who did found a diminishing range of items as magazines went into decline and for some reason Smiths decided not to try and compete with Waterstones, reducing their book offer when it was their most viable source of income. Latterly they bought an already failed company, Toys R Us into stores robbing their own area of even more space yet the rent was presumably vital for survival. Plus, kids can get a photo next to a giraffe. I suppose anyone can if they choose. Once a photo opportunity with an inflatable animal is a shop’s key draw then something is wrong.

As yet it’s not clear how TG Jones can add anything that will sustain the business long term. The initial policy of continuity can’t last too long; sooner or later they will need to stamp their own identity and try some new things. Currently nearly everything they sell is what are now called legacy products and its difficult to see what up and coming things they could add to increase footfall. They are being squeezed both by online alternatives and stores like B&M in terms of what USP they can bring to the high street and how they can undercut rival’s prices. If it feels like a mountain to climb, they could look at HMV another shop whose days appeared numbered ten years ago but who have rallied to take advantage of being the only retailer left standing in their field. There is evidence suggesting that far from wanting to do everything online, even younger people are sometimes turning back to physical products and IRL shopping as a lifestyle choice which a shop like TGs could take advantage of. See - I’m already calling it TGs.