‘Too big to go down’ is an old football maxim and a cautionary tale. It refers to the complacent attitude that creeps up on established clubs, a deluded conviction that given their consistent achievements, they will never be relegated.
The same attitude pervades in the world of business. Former household names on either sides of the Atlantic, such as Pan Am, TWA, Atari, Woolworths, BHS and C&A (in the UK) all went bust largely because they thought themselves invincible. The same mood exists at Boots today, which is overpriced and over-reliant on being a source of NHS prescriptions. It also used to be the case at Marks & Spencer until a few years ago, when it woke up to the fact that the likes of Primark and online shopping had arrived in earnest.
Both establishments have an unmistakable whiff of moribund complacency about them
The same cannot be said for WH Smith, or the high street outlets it sold off last year and which now go under the name of TG Jones. As reported today, TG Jones has won court approval for a rescue plan which will pave the way for the closure of 150 of its outlets.
Both establishments have an unmistakable whiff of moribund complacency about them, reflected in the identical experience felt by consumers at both outlets. There is the expensive stationery, overpriced greeting cards and the outrageous sums WH Smith charges for snacks and drinks at its railway and motorway service stations. A 750ml bottle of water at one of these shops is around £3.50, compared to the £1.25 you pay at Greggs for a 500ml bottle.
And then there’s the staff. Because I couldn’t pick up the Daily Telegraph from my hometown in Kent this morning, I reluctantly went into the St Pancras branch of WH Smith to buy a copy and had the same, abysmal, predictable experience as usual. You wait for someone to trudge reluctantly to the counter before being dealt with by a surly member of staff in complete silence.
That’s London for you these days, you might say. That’s true. While the general public in London are more polite compared to when I grew up there in the 1980s, staff in shops there have become increasingly moody and taciturn.
Yet that doesn’t explain why staff in shops and supermarkets where I live remain courteous and even chipper, yet their counterparts in my local TG Jones are just as indifferent and uninterested in what they’re doing or in the customers they’re serving. WH Smith may have sold off its high street concerns, but the same lazy attitude remains, along with the same overpriced wares. Indeed, believing that a superficial makeover would solve all of its problems is indicative of precisely the sluggish attitude that has made both outfits such unlovable places today.
A simple renaming process was conformation that TG Jones and its former parent company are terminally lazy firms bereft of new ideas and unaware to their precarious predicament – both, for instance, have a negligible online presence.
Back in the 1980s, most people went as a matter of course to Smiths for stationery, cards, books and school textbooks. But the twin outfits have failed to realise that times have changed. They still appear to think that they can rely on this reliable and dutiful customer base, when in this age of internet shopping, established outfits previously faced with oblivion have necessarily diversified to secure their survival. Branches of Foyles and Waterstones have cafés while HMV today is as much a place for band merchandise and cult fiction as it is to buy music.
Whatever their names or whatever their ownership status, both shops have become indistinguishably colourless and seemingly doomed. As Charlotte Block, chief strategy officer at Saffron Brand Consultants, said of WH Smith last year, after the sell-off of its high street stores: ‘It does not offer anything particularly unique. You would be hard-pushed to describe it beyond an overpriced newsagent.’ Far from being too big to fail, the pair both deserve to fail.
