British bookstore chain WH Smith has sold the entirety of its town retail arm to Modella Capital, a private equity firm. The store acts as the primary newsstand outlet for comics in the UK.
Sold for £76 million (~$100 million), Modella Capital will be picking up over 480 retail stores set up in town centres, retail parks, and shopping malls across the UK, renaming them TG Jones. WH Smith will retain its brand and refocus on its network of travel stores set up in prime locations like hospitals, train stations and airports across 32 countries, which actually make up the bulk of its annual turnover. The new TG Jones name set to replace the high street brand in June, was picked by Modella Capital as it gave the same “sense of family” as the beloved WH Smith name.
While in more recent years WH Smith stores have hosted post offices and sold tech gadgets alongside stationary, gift cards and more, it is primarily known as a bookshop and newsstand vender. As such it became the only guaranteed place to find most British newsstand comics – acting as a crucial gateway to the traditional form of the medium. Titles such as Rebellion’s 2000 AD and sister title Judge Dredd Megazine, DC Thomson’s Beano and Commando, and David Fickling’s Phoenix – as well as Panini-published reprints of Marvel and DC comics (plus indie titles like Shift and Quantum) – were all obtainable across stores from London to Leicester, and Kendal to Kilmarnock. It is unclear how much the stores (and their 5,000-strong staff) will be altered by the shakeup, nor the place of magazines and comics in their future.
Concern for the move is echoed by British comics blogger John Freeman, who said:
“WHSmith is still a leading seller of newsstand comics such as 2000AD, BEANO, Quantum and SHIFT, as well as newspapers and magazines in its high street stores, despite instore layout changes in recent years deprioritising their visibility. If they were all to close, this might adversely impact specialty publishers”
British periodical comics draw their sales from a mix of newsstand retail presence and subscriptions, with occasional appearances in dedicated comic book stores. Most, if not all, of their high street presence is down to WH Smith, with supermarkets a distant (and more inconsistent) second.
Explaining the rationale for the sale, WH Smith said:
“Over the last decade, WHSmith has become a leading global travel retailer with over 1,200 Travel stores across 32 countries. While profitable and cash generative, the UK High Street business has become an increasingly smaller part of the WHSmith Group. In the financial year ended 31 August 2024, 75% of the Group’s revenue and 85% of its trading profit came from its Travel business.”
Modella Capital is a private equity firm that was formed in 2022. It specialises in picking up retail and consumer focused enterprises including arts and crafts retailer Hobbycraft and Ted Baker fashion licensee No Ordinary Designer Label.
WH Smith has been in existence since 1792, initially as a London-based news-vendor. It expanded its operations in the Victorian era with the emergence of railroads, acting as the prime source of novels, newspapers, and magazines for travellers. It would later expand its presence beyond travel hotspots to become a favoured (and ubiquitous) public retail brand in town centres and high streets.
WH Smith had announced it was putting its retail arm for sale in January to focus on its travel stores. It had declared that only 15% of its overall revenue came from high street retail. The high street sector of the economy has been struggling since before the onset of the covid pandemic. With rising costs, ever slimming profit margins, online retail, and declining footfall in town centers seeing a number of familiar British stores close.
It is unclear how heavily impacted British comics publishers will be by the sudden shift but some may be somewhat cushioned thanks to diversification of their lines beyond periodicals and the embracing of the graphic novel and collection format. The biggest domestic success in recent years being Jamie Smart’s Bunny vs Monkey series which was first published in David Fickling’s The Phoenix, which closely rivals sales juggernaut Dog Man in the UK book charts. Meanwhile Rebellion has taken great strides in building out its back catalogue of collections from 2000 AD and its Treasury of British Comics, and gone to great length to boost its presence in the US.
DC Thomson could be the most impacted by the change. A newspaper and magazine publisher based in Scotland, it was formerly the biggest name in traditional British comics. Long reluctant to shift to book collections of archival material, limiting reprints of the Beano, Dandy, and beloved Scottish newspaper strips The Broons and Oor Wullie, to hardcover annuals. In more recent years it has sporadically experimented with collections of work from war comics series Commando and Warlord, and defunct scifi series Starblazer. There may be change – as it very recently partnered with Harper Collins imprint Farshore Books to collect popular Beano series Betty and the Yeti for the thriving kids graphic novel market (coincidentally releasing this week).
