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Roula Khalaf, Editor of the FT, selects her favourite stories in this weekly newsletter.
WHSmith branded shops will disappear from UK high streets following a £76mn deal to sell the business on Friday.
The group will offload all 480 stores in town centres to Modella Capital, which also owns HobbyCraft in the UK, to focus on its lucrative international travel retail business, which accounts for 75 per cent of group revenue and 85 per cent of trading profit.
The WHSmith stores will be rebranded as TG Jones as part of the deal, the company said on Friday. The group’s travel stores in airports, train stations and hospitals will continue to trade under the WHSmith name, which has a 233-year history.
Understandably, the piece dwells on the deal itself, and the implications for both Britain’s high streets and one of its most visible mid-caps — its name derived from William Henry Smith, its founders’ youngest son.
But FT Alphaville, brainwormed, couldn’t get past that rebrand.
TGJones… what does it mean? Is it a reference to serene former Everton centre-half Thomas George “TG” Jones — who oddly enough ended up running a North Wales newsagent in later life?
Surely it couldn’t just be a vague concatenation of initials and surname designed to simply evoke WHSmith while remaining distinct?
Uh:
TGJones feels like a worthy successor to the WHSmith brand. Jones carries the same sense of family and reflects these stores being at the heart of everyone’s high street.
That’s a Modella Capital spokesperson announcing today’s deal. We asked them for more detail, and they told us:
The TGJones brand is not a reference to any individual. It’s obviously based on another familiar surname (like WHSmith), that will resonate with people across the UK, and we wanted to keep that sense of a family business.
Heartwarming.
