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 end of the high street?

British Home Stores closes for good this week leaving another gap in the increasingly slim choice of large UK stores. Not a shop I personally used but one which employed thousands of people and whose large city centre footprint will be difficult to fill. I suppose some of the space will soon be occupied by Costa Nero Republic or student flats but it is another example of a big name being downed by the triple whammy of high rates, Primark and online shopping. BHS was of course a struggling company but more intriguing- and perhaps more prescient- is the decision by Burtons and Dorothy Perkins to abandon many of their larger stores for a mainly online presence. Is this a glimpse of our retail future and if so, what will they do with all those empty shop units? Not that cities are stopping building them. No development is complete these days without a row of shop units in it even though the range of shops is falling year on year. How many coffee shops is too many? 

Why do we keep building more shops?

The one consistent message we are getting from those people who spend their lives predicting what will happen is that the decline of the High Street is well underway. The evidence is there for us to see- over the past five years plenty of well-known big chains have closed or been through an administration process that has left them a shadow of their former selves. At the same time, with far fewer headlines, a lot of specialist and local businesses have also disappeared. There is probably no high street in the country without a number of vacant units. The question then has to be- why are people still creating new shop units?