Metropol

woah wrote:I wonder why anyone does bother really - there are better places to go for almost everything they do, but they do seem to do decent business.

I'm sure I read in the business pages one day that it's pretty much the high-price rail station/airport/service station small convenience stores that are keeping the company doing well - places where basically you have little to no choice of using them. Presumably the Post Office deal was to try and keep footfall up in the other main stores.

I know there are normal WHS stores in Edinburgh at Cameron Toll and the Gyle, but it'll be at least 10 years since I've been in either.

For me, WHSmith was the place to go to pick up niche magazines which the newsagent didn't stock. But go into a supermarket and the likes of Tesco and Sainsbury's have a similar range of titles. In my local Sainsbury's, it's half the length down the store with at least 300 titles, a smaller store will have at around 100.

With the decline in sales of print media, they've become a jack of all trades, introducing food, drink and cigarettes, upselling tat and putting in vouchers that you can't use or ads for other stores such as Very.

Every August, you'd see kids with their parents buying stationary for the new academic year, but with Poundland offering the same products cheaper, it's no surprise that corner of the market has gone, along with CD's and DVD's. My local store still sells a small range of DVD's, mainly from the DVD chart.

Speaking of WHSmith, apparently there's a time capsule from 2003 in one of their stores in Sheffield.

https://twitter.com/queenoffrog/status/ ... 8681365504


(Click for bigger photo)

I always thought the Smiths/Post Office deal was a decent idea. They're both places you would go for stationary, for one.

Goodness me, I can't believe that's still there.... I'm fairly sure they had two or three originally.

In my local town and in Liverpool they closed the big W H Smiths a good few years back and moved them to smaller sites with a Post Office inside. Where I work now was a W H Smith until early 2015 I think, we have W H Smith Blue walls and carpets upstairs as it use to be a 2 floor store.

Meadowhall branch is quite nice.

Pete wrote:The branch in back home has had a bit of a tart up, they've replaced the departmental POS boards that ran along the top panels of the walls. Previously these had been the old blue ones, but at one point were just removed leaving just blank metal, covered in old velcro and tape. They've been replaced with white ones which actually look quite nice. The new strips at the top of the shelving in the middle of the store have changed to a black background and a sans serif font (like a shit version of the new M&S London font). Again looking smarter.

This happened in Nottingham too - interesting seeing "Videos" and "Games" headers.

WHSmith is a good source of discounted drinks on the verge of expiry, but not always too tempting when Wilko has Tango Cherry 600ml for 50p - if only their fridge were set to a sensible temperature.

The last thing I bought from there that I considered good value (barring stickered drinks) was a huge pack of Sharpies on a better offer than others I've seen.

Martin Phillp wrote:...buying stationary for the new academic year...

Philip wrote:...places you would go for stationary...

Pedant's corner: stationery, with an "e" for envelope.

Argh! I even considered looking it up to see if it was the right one before posting, but went with my gut judgement… (This kind of thing annoys me since I'm usually spot on with spelling/grammar)

tillyoshea wrote:Pedant's corner: stationery, with an "e" for envelope.

Hehe!

Spelling, ten out of ten.

But is your handwriting really bad enought to be a doctor?

WillPS wrote:Meadowhall branch is quite nice.

Pete wrote:The branch in back home has had a bit of a tart up, they've replaced the departmental POS boards that ran along the top panels of the walls. Previously these had been the old blue ones, but at one point were just removed leaving just blank metal, covered in old velcro and tape. They've been replaced with white ones which actually look quite nice. The new strips at the top of the shelving in the middle of the store have changed to a black background and a sans serif font (like a shit version of the new M&S London font). Again looking smarter.

This happened in Nottingham too - interesting seeing "Videos" and "Games" headers.

They did that when the Bradford store was closing down to move into the new shopping centre (the new store being a fraction of the size of the old one), revealing old 1980s lettering and pictograms printed directly on the metal