Why WHSmith's 233-year history may be about to change forever

In the decades following, the retail stalwart dabbled with travel, do-it-yourself and recorded music - at one time owning a controlling stake in the Our Price chain. In March 1998, the company acquired John Menzies’ retail outlets, which for many years had been the main rival to WHSmith’s railway station outlets. The move also heralded the English-headquartered group’s concerted push into Scotland.

Fast forward to 2025 and bosses have raised the “for sale” sign on the high street part of the 233-year-old empire. Responding to press speculation, WHSmith has confirmed that it is “exploring potential strategic options” for what it stressed was a “profitable and cash generative” part of the business. Those options, unsurprisingly, include a possible sale.

A disposal would allow the group to turn its full attention to the global travel market, where it has been growing at pace as it targets the post-pandemic traveller with time to kill waiting on a plane or train. That travel business now encompasses 1,200 stores across 32 countries, and generates three-quarters of overall revenues and 85 per cent of group trading profit. Easy seeing the logic behind the desire to evolve.

Given how tough conditions remain on the UK high street and how small the list of potential trade buyers is, there must be concern over the future of the WHSmith name in hundreds of town centres and shopping malls. Many of the stores look a bit tired, in need of some new shelving, a lick of paint, a more adventurous layout and as least in the case of my local branch in Dunfermline, some new carpeting, given that it still sports the faded tartan floor covering from the Menzies era.

There remains a whiff of nostalgia surrounding Smiths, and in Scotland with its predecessor. That former John Menzies store in my home town in Fife was where I obtained my first Beano, my first Warlord comic, my first record and one of those newfangled Sinclair ZX81 computer things way back when.

Recent years have seen WHSmith attempt to reinvent itself, jumping onto seemingly any and every bandwagon - DVDs, PC peripherals, memory storage, the vinyl revival. Trouble is others have done these more successfully and frequently more cheaply. Indeed, speak to those who have visited a WHSmith store of late and the subject of pricing will inevitably be raised.

The competition for everyday stationery items such as pens, writing pads and diaries is fierce and many cash-strapped shoppers will have opted for the supermarket or discount chain alternative. Once a mainstay of physical music retailing, along with Woolworths and the specialist retailers such as HMV and Virgin, you’ll be hard pushed to find more than a few token albums or the latest DVD releases in a handful of Smiths branches. But then the advent of streaming has dealt a fatal blow to most national chains with HMV being pretty much the last man standing.

And with books, you may find WHSmith a little underwhelming these days. Many towns and cities with a branch of the venerable bookseller, once such an innovator in the field, will also possess a Waterstone’s emporium, with its bright and busy atmosphere and, very often, a decent cup of coffee too. Ironic, perhaps, that Smiths owned Waterstone’s - founded by Scots-born former WHSmith executive Sir Tim Waterstone - for almost a decade.

The rebooting of WHSmith has seen Post Office counters added to scores of branches since 2007, and the uncertainty surrounding the future of the high street retail operation will have regular users of postal services concerned. In some cases, those Post Office outlets have been relocated to the shops following the closure of the only postal office in town.

A very recent development has involved Toys ‘R’ Us opening concessions in a number of WHSmith stores, marking the return of the toy brand’s physical presence in the UK after its own outlets closed in 2018.

Amid all this change, there remains a hardcore WHSmith element - shoppers like myself who buy newspapers and magazines there on a pretty regular basis and, certainly on the specialist magazine front, few alternatives exist. Not every periodical reader wishes to go down the subscription or digital route.

So what now for WHSmith’s high street business? Investment bank Peel Hunt expects the company’s strategic review to conclude in a sale, likely to private equity. But it notes that the headwinds in the retail sector are “well known” and the list of interested parties is “likely short”.

Russ Mould, AJ Bell’s investment director, says there isn’t an obvious buyer for the high street business, particularly if the group is looking to sell everything together rather than in blocks of stores.

“WHSmith’s high street stores have been woefully under-invested, with the business doing as little as possible to bring them into the modern age,” he notes. “The fact there is an X (formerly Twitter) account dedicated to documenting the chain’s shabby carpets and messy stores says it all.

“CDS Superstores might be a name to watch as The Range owner is one of the few retailers hungry for more, having last year bought the Homebase brand and up to 70 stores. Alternatively, a private equity-backed consortium might want to take control and run the stores on a franchise basis, potentially keeping the WHSmith name if that was an option.”