WH Smith unveils bookselling blueprint for the next decade

WH Smith has unveiled a new books strategy for its High Street arm, designed to futureproof sales at the 611-strong chain “for the next decade”.

With revenue in the High Street business falling year on year, new managing director Carl Cowling has been moved across from the flourishing Travel business—where he was also m.d.—to take the High Street arm by the scruff of the neck and set out its vision for the next 10 years. In order to grow book sales and better target its core customers, the 225-year-old company is trialling its new strategy for books in its 17,500 sq ft Broad Street store in Reading, which it expects to roll out to the other 610 shops in the estate.

The publicly traded retailer plans to invest in refurbishing the larger shops in its High Street portfolio, conduct a three-month review of its range and radically ramp up how it recommends books to customers. "We want to make sure we have a books strategy that works for the next decade," Cowling told The Bookseller. "It has always been the case in retail, but now more than ever you can’t just stand still. We want to set out our vision for what we want to do, what we want to be famous for and how we are going to drive the business forward."

Creating a pleasant shopping environment and concentrating on the children’s market are the chain’s key priorities over the next two years, along with cementing W H Smith’s reputation, distinct from, for example, Waterstones, as a reassuring home for light readers.

"Given that the vast majority of our customers are light readers, we want to be famous for being the home of reassurance and recommendation," said Cowling. "So for those customers who come into our shops, who aren’t sure of the book that they want, we want to curate a range for them."

He added: "We also want to be famous for kids’ books. Children already love W H Smith, it is a very friendly atmosphere: we have all the fashionable stationery, we have all the things that kids love, and in no way is it a scary or intimidating environment. We are going to look at our book section and make that an even more inspiring place for children. Everybody needs to do their bit to push the market and not just substitute sales, and we think we could be doing our bit to inspire children to buy more books," he said.

To help him achieve the new vision, Cowling has brought back Alastair Aldous as the trading director for books, following Frankie Adams’ departure just before Christmas after six months in the role. Former unit director for books Rachel Russell has also been brought back into the fold as commercial director of the High Street arm after a five-year hiatus, during which time she handled general merchandise and entertainment for the retailer. The rest of the books team consists of Sandra Bradley, head of fiction; fiction buyers Sue Scholes and Ashley Bruce; non-fiction buyers Michael Stewart, Stuart Bruce and Stephen McEntee; head of children’s Mike Ford; and children’s buyer Rachel Airey.

On the agenda 

One of the first tasks Aldous has is to slim down the range in W H Smith stores, with the plan to have more books sitting face-out, enticing customers to pick them up.

The team is also embarking on a three-month review of its range outside its Chart offer, and the three successful book clubs it runs with Richard & Judy, Zoella and Tom Fletcher, which cover adult fiction, young adults and children’s books respectively. The timeframe to do so is from now until the spring.

Cowling explained: "In a big departure for us, in our larger stores we are slimming down the range and bringing prominence to two or three titles per shelf. We are going
to highlight within the range those consistent, good sellers throughout the years and bring them to light readers, giving a recommendation for each of those books and explaining what they are about. For those customers who want to go a bit deeper than the Book Club titles, they can browse through our range but can easily settle on something that they want, without having to go through everything spine-on."

Hero bays

Building on its recommendations to readers, W H Smith stores will also "hero" big-brand authors—such as Lee Child, James Patterson and George R R Martin—with protruding shelves bearing their names and containing their titles, which will receive publishers’ support.

The retailer also plans to free up the time of staff in 10 of its largest stores, which it hopes will enable them to talk to customers and hand-sell titles. "We have got a programme where we are trying to free up the time of some of our book specialists, people like Sharon in this Reading store, who has been with us for many years. We are trying to take away some of the mundane tasks and give them the freedom to go out there and talk to customers," Cowling said.

He added: "We are experimenting with everything, so it is too early to say yet if it is working. If you speak to customers, they will say it works. But there is a huge cost to doing this, so we are seeing how it works out."

Aldous said the face-out books on shelves with accompanying recommendation cards were already proving to be effective. "With some that went in two weeks ago, we have already sold out and are now playing catch-up because we have run out of stock that quickly," he said.

In terms of the refurbishment, the retailer is ripping up its flooring, rolling in new display tables, installing new shelving, and the Reading store also has new signage celebrating the company’s 225th year.

"You can see this shop has been heavily de-cluttered," said Aldous. "We are planning to have better curation of the tables and the shelves are now much easier to browse. The store has a kind of navigational pull it didn’t have before—it is nice to browse in."

The next generation

Literature for young adults and education sections of the shops are also going to have distinct branding. "We are seeing really good growth areas in teen and young adult titles at the moment, and this is making sure it has its own voice,” said Aldous. He added: “Education is a very stable market, and we want to do more with it."

Cowling stressed the project was a work in progress, but it has been warmly received by publishers. The retailer still has a partnership with Kobo to sell e-books, but Cowling said "unapologetically our main market is physical books".

"We want the support of the book industry," he added. "Footfall on the high street has gone down every year for the past 10 years, so every retailer has to be at the top of their game."