Print magazines may yet have a future on the high street, as WHSmith’s non-travel stores find a new owner. Name’s changing to TGJones.
The staff at my local brand of WHSmith found out that their store was closing, and their jobs were at risk, when they unpacked display material for the shop window. Said display material declared that a closing down sale was starting. A week later when I went in, the staff still hadn’t been given any direct communications as to what was going on, and were telling customers that they simply didn’t know. Because, well, they hadn’t been told.
For physical magazines, WHSmith – appreciating it’s a bit of a shadow of what it was (I’ve lost count of how many videos and ZX Spectrum games I bought from there back in the day) – was an outlet. A place that actually displayed a range of publications, rather than the top 50 sellers. Hopefully, it will continuet o do so.
But it won’t be as WHSmith, at least not on what’s left of the High Street. The business is being split, with WHSmith Travel continuing as is, and the town and city stores now sold to the owners of Hobbycraft. The deal values the non-travel end of the chain at £76m.
480 retail stores have thus been sold to Modella Capital, and the plan will be to rebrand the business as, er, TGJones. Always remember people get paid a lot of money to come up with stuff like that.
I’ll pop into my local branch over the weekend and see if it’s now surviving the cull, and seeing if they’re working for people who treat them with a bit more respect and dignity. I live in hope.
You can read more on the WHSmiths sale here. Hopefully, the vast majority of jobs and stores can be saved, and that’s a real positive given how bleak things were looking a few weeks ago.
Long live TGJones.
