The British bookseller WH Smith has been selling books and other products for 250 years. They have 1,100 locations spread around the UK. Like all good things, it is coming to an end. WH Smith sold 480 locations for a paltry £76m and will be renamed TGJones, while the firm will keep the WH Smith brand for its travel business, which operates in railway stations, airports, and hospitals. Customers are outraged over the sale, but the name change.
Modella, the company that bought WH Smith and Hobbycraft last year, also owns The Original Factory Shop chain. Modella said the TGJones name had been chosen to give the chain the same “family” feel as the venerable WH Smith brand.
The books and stationery retailer will keep its almost 1,300 travel stores and its website, although it will no longer offer online sales and will merely provide information. WH Smith did not sell the digital greetings card business Funky Pigeon. However, WH Smith is now looking at “strategic options” for that business, including potentially selling it.
However, Brits have been criticizing the “entirely made up” re-brand name as “cynical and soulless” (the original name was based on its founder’s name, Henry Walton Smith, who established the company in 1792).
Consumer journalist Harry Wallop wrote on X/Twitter: “It’s an entirely made-up name. There’s cynical and soulless branding. And then there’s TG Jones.” Another person added: “Imagine buying an authentic retail brand, steeped in history, which has graced the British High Street since 1792, and re-branding it TG Jones – a name that its new owners have made up to sound similar to WH Smith.
Michael Kozlowski is the editor-in-chief at Good e-Reader and has written about audiobooks and e-readers for the past fifteen years. Newspapers and websites such as the CBC, CNET, Engadget, Huffington Post and the New York Times have picked up his articles. He Lives in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.