UK newsagent group WH Smith has reported increased profits off of flat sales reports the Daily Mail. City AM has a similar report. Do your own search and you’ll see most reporters writing the same ‘assessment’. The group does not appear to be as adventurous in its UK newsagency businesses and some newsagents in Australia are in theirs.
WH Smith in Australia is really five businesses in one group and I am told they plan to keep the five businesses under their current names. However, I am also told they expect to significantly expand rooftops to provide outlets for their wholesale product lines.
What will be most interesting to watch in Australia is how card company John sands manages their apparent strong relationship with WH Smith while maintaining their strong relationship with the nextra group.
Being a JS store I am also watching with keen interest in the development of WH smith in Oz.
It was interesting to note when I went shopping this week that Woolies had the Papyrus range of cards (JS exclusive range for exclusive shops we were told) and I had a bit of a problem with that as I don’t consider the duopoly to be an exclusive shop and I have empty pockets where papyrus cards should be while Woolies have theirs filled????
I have about 12 feet of Papyrus so I would have thought I was a fairly good customer for this product. Maybe the lack of exclusivity is why my P/pockets keep looking empty so I will be watching that space with a view to changing the mix if
it continues down this path.
Just went to the Better Retailing (UK) site
and read a story about the first WH Smith
site (Scarborough) to be bombarded on the 15th Feb. 1915. The story was written by the local newsagent and tells the story about his delivery boys being out on the road at the time of the attack.
It was a great read and it made me proud to be part of the Newsagency family for 40 years.
I was surprised to read that WH Smith had
paper “depots” from which the deliveries ensued.
We in SA thought we were the vanguards of depots (lots of newsagents banding together in one spot to handle and deliver
thousands of papers). In fact, in SA, we
were expected to go into a depot and if anyone disagreed they lost their right to choose where and were told to go to wherever it suited the publisher.
This, of course, saved thousands of dollars for the publisher by being able to distribute huge amounts of papers to just one depot instead of maybe 20 drops to separate newsagents.
Maybe our forefathers knew a thing or two.
June, in the US, Papyrus cards are in specialty retail as well as in supermarkets and drug stores – like convenience stores but bugger.
We used to stock Papyrus June, but for the reasons you explained we switched to a range called Bug Art from Henderson’s. Has worked for us. Maybe an option / point of difference for you?
June,i have been with Hallmark cards all the time and customers always said that our Hallmark cards are much more attractive than the others (JS) and i would not change to any others.