Comment: WHSmith, where less is more

So there’s to be a new leader at the helm of WHSmith in 2013 and given that the new chief executive taking the reins from Kate Swann is from the board, expect little change, in the stores at least.

Retailers are well known for changing the internal appearance of their shops in order to maintain footfall or to get one over on the competition (or more usually both). Not so WHSmith – whose stores, with the possible exception of a resized logo here or a self-scanning checkout there, have seemingly remained set in aspic for some years.

The chances are good, of course, that WHSmith-watchers will at this point cry foul, but in truth, if the casual shopper doesn’t notice anything particularly different, then in reality there is no real difference. Things have changed however, but it is the nature of the offer, rather than the in-store landscape, that has altered during Ms Swann’s tenure.

A limited range of books, a lot of magazines, some newspapers, chilled fizzy drinks and confectionery now equate to the offer in a WHSmith travel outlet, as found in stations and airports across the land. Add stationery and computer/printer ‘peripherals’ to the mix and hey presto, a WHSmith high street store is the result.

This is a very carefully crafted product mix where any category that hasn’t proved its worth has been excised and the outcome is a chain with somewhat boring interiors, but which most of us will drop into from time to time. The retailer is in fact very unusual by the standards of the high street insofar as store design and aesthetics seem to have been allowed to head for the door without much question.

What WHSmith stores are is an exercise in stock realpolitik – identify what works best, put more of it in (hence the long aisle of confectionery in the travel stores that forms part of the ‘queuing system’) and let the rest go hang. There’s even a real sense of the modular about the equipment that has been used – perish the thought that any form of localisation should form part of the formula.

On paper, you might think that customers would desert. And this may be the case as year on year it has been cost-cutting. That said, the incredible shrinking top line and cost-base seem to work. What could be done to improve matters further? Perhaps offering cut-price Hotel Chocolat goodies at the checkout instead of Cadbury’s would work, but HC boss Angus Thirlwell might demur…