WHSmith chief executive Carl Cowling said he sees “exciting opportunities” for growth across North American airports and UK hospitals, following the retailer’s preliminary results for the year to August 31.
On its way to being a one-stop shop for essentials across its stores in airports, rail and hospitals, Cowling told Retail Week that the next step for growth is in North America.
“We opened 40 shops in the year, and today we’ve announced that we want a further 24 stores across Dallas, Denver and Washington,” he said.
“So North America is a really exciting opportunity, and we plan to get to about 20% market share over the course of the next three to four years. We’ll have 500 shops in America to make us a very big business over there.”
WHSmith is also making progress with its hospital offering as it opened its first ever own-brand cafe format called Smith’s Kitchen in August.
Its hospital division which also consists of its brands such as Marks & Spencer Simply Food and Costa Coffee saw revenue grow by 14% year on year. Cowling said the team is now “mostly looking to open more stores in hospitals”.
“We’ve got about 145 shops over about 100 hospitals and there’s 200 further hospitals that could still have our offer,” he explains.
“When hospital tenders come up, we tend to win them. We’d now hope to win about 10 of those per year.”
Jingle bells
While WHSmith’s total travel revenues increased by 11% to exceed £1.4bn, its high street sales dipped by 4% to £452m.
The group has turned its attention to its travel arm over the past couple of years, but its recent Toys R Us concessions in its high street stores could boost sales over the festive season.
“We’ve got 65 Toys R Us shop-in-shops now, and it’ll be interesting to see how they perform over Christmas.
“Around 60% of all toy sales happen in the five weeks leading up to Christmas, so we’ll start seeing that build up in the next week or two.”
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