THE boss of WHSmith has said the retailer won’t be opening any more UK High Street stores. Instead it will focus on UK airports and train stations, as well as opening shops in the US and Europe, its chief executive Carl Cowling told the BBC.
“We’ve got a very healthy High Street business in the UK. But we’ve got no ambitions to grow that,” he said. WHSmith has about 550 UK High Street stores and opening more “would just be a duplication”, he told the BBC. “When you look at the main cities across England, Wales and Scotland, we are present in those cities,” Cowling said.
Consumer group Which? twice ranked WHSmith among the UK’s worst High Street retailers in 2018 and 2019 after some customers complained about “messy” shops. A spoof Twitter account also mocked the state of its carpets. But WHSmith insists that it will continue to invest in its stores, with Cowling pointing to a retail partnership with Toys R Us in nine UK High Street shops. Over the past 20 years, WHSmith has expanded its presence in airports, train stations, motorway service areas and US-based resorts.
Cowling told the BBC World Service Marketplace Morning Report that WHSmith’s biggest growth market is the US. It has captured about 12 per cent of the retail market in US airports, he added. “Our ambition is to get to 20pc over the course of the next four years and then that will mean probably only the best parts of 150 stores,” he said.
He added that WHSmith will spend about £120 million this year opening shops in the US and Europe. “So in the first half of this year, we opened 30 shops in North America and opened another 30 shops in the second half of this year,” he said. “We’ve got a pipeline of 60 stores to open and we’re constantly winning tenders in airports.” In 2019, WHSmith bought Marshall Retail Group, a travel retailer that opens specific stores and brands in airports. It also acquired InMotion, a travel retailer which sells tech products, in 2018.
“We run the Hugo Boss store, we’ve got Kiehl’s there, we’ve got InMotion, our own tech accessory stores, and we’ve got books and all sorts of souvenirs. So we bring that all together under one brand,” said Cowling. Last year, WHSmith partnered with Amazon to open a walk-out technology store in LaGuardia Airport in New York.
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