EXCLUSIVE: The shop was once known as WHSmith earlier than the model was bought off final 12 months to Modella Capital.
Categorical reporter Adam Toms visited TGJones in Crowborough (Picture: Adam Gerrard / Each day Categorical)
WHSmith was one of many UK’s most iconic excessive avenue manufacturers earlier than a latest change in possession noticed it disappear as we knew it. The chain was bought to Modella Capital, homeowners of Hobbycraft, in early 2025, that means 480 UK excessive avenue shops had been rebranded to TG Jones. WHSmith outlets can nonetheless be discovered, nonetheless, at airports, railway stations and hospitals.
Rising up, I commonly frolicked in Nuneaton city centre with my household on the weekends. My pocket cash was spent totally on books and magazines – a few of which I bought at Waterstones, and others at WHSmith, which was throughout the street. I grew to become very conversant in the shop’s structure and what was on supply there. I began with books aimed toward youthful readers, after all, earlier than shifting on to publications for youngsters.
Favourites included Terry Deary’s Horrible Histories books, later made into the beloved CBBC sketch sequence, and the CHERUB sequence by Robert Muchamore.
WHSmith outlets at the moment are generally known as TGJones in excessive streets (Picture: Adam Gerrard / Each day Categorical)
A fan of stationery, I additionally purchased notebooks, felt ideas and pens.
It felt very satisfying to collect collectively new issues for the beginning of the college 12 months, with a view to filling out my train books with the best handwriting I might muster all 12 months spherical.
This solely ever lasted a few week, after all.
It’s, after all, not the one one which has gone, with Debenhams, BHS and Wilko additionally being latest casualties of a hospital setting for retailers.
Lately, I went right into a TGJones retailer in Crowborough to see what it was like.
I used to be greeted by the identical issues as had all the time been stocked – books, magazines, stationary, playing cards and reward packages.
It’s good to see that the subsequent technology of youngsters can make the most of a wholesome providing of inexpensive books, with the variety of younger individuals who learn for pleasure in worrying decline.
There was a brand new Toys R Us part, which was pleasing to see. The large standalone shops it as soon as had had been closed in 2018.
It was barely much less filled with various things than I remembered the Nuneaton retailer being as a child.
Books and Toys R Us merchandise on cabinets in TGJones (Picture: Adam Toms)
Though that’s possibly as a result of I used to be smaller and extra simply impressed.
The branding, so far as I might inform, was the identical, other than the title, clearly.
If one walked right into a WHSmith store, one would discover a lot the identical.
So I’m considerably baffled as to why the title was not someway saved the identical, or the brand new TGJones retailer was not rebranded fully as a way to set up a brand new, rejuvenated excessive avenue presence.
I wager some clients had been initially left a tad confused in regards to the change, in the event that they had been conscious of it in any respect.
It simply appears a bit useless.
The brand new title is made-up.
“Jones carries the identical sense of household and displays these shops being on the coronary heart of everybody’s excessive avenue,” a spokesperson for Modella stated.
“It’s clearly primarily based on one other acquainted surname – Smith, Jones.”
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Very bizarre.
Certainly Brits wish to see precise household companies on their streets, quite than invented ones.
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