Customers Never Really Bought Books

What the collapse of TG Jones reveals about the retail industry’s slow drift away from human connection, product passion and customer understanding

The headlines surrounding the likely collapse of TG Jones, formerly the WH Smith high street business, have been framed in familiar terms. Declining footfall, online competition, cost pressures and weak consumer confidence. This is all true, but I think the real story runs much deeper.

For me, this news feels particularly sad because it represents the fading away of a type of retailing that shaped my entire career. I started in retail in 1982 as a graduate management trainee with John Menzies, the long-time competitor to WH Smith. Both businesses shared remarkably similar origins, beginning as newspaper kiosks serving Britain’s expanding Victorian railway network before evolving into high street destinations for books, music, magazines, stationery and discovery.

Back then, these stores were not simply transactional spaces. They were places where customers explored interests, discovered new passions and often sought advice from colleagues who genuinely cared about the products they sold. That matters more than many modern retailers realise.

The apprenticeship modern retail leaders no longer receive

I spent 12 years with John Menzies, progressing through store management, merchandising, buying and marketing roles. Looking back, I realise how fortunate I was to learn retail from the shop floor upwards. Retail leaders of that era learned by observing customers directly.

You learned how people behaved when they were confused, excited, frustrated or uncertain. You learned which products customers picked up but rarely bought. You learned the emotional difference between a customer buying a birthday card, a sympathy card or a congratulations card. Most importantly, you learned that customers rarely bought products for purely functional reasons.

Today, many retail decisions are made far away from stores by people who may never have spent meaningful time serving customers face-to-face. Technology has given retailers more data than ever before, but in many cases less understanding.

EPOS systems, centralised buying functions and range optimisation programmes undoubtedly improved efficiency. Individually, many of those decisions made perfect commercial sense. Collectively, however, they often removed something vital.

Stores gradually lost local personality. Colleagues lost influence over the products they sold. Product knowledge became less valued than process compliance. Retail became operationally smarter but emotionally flatter and customers noticed.

The moment I realised retail was not about selling books

One experience from my early retail career has stayed with me for more than 40 years.

A customer approached me in one of our stores asking for books about bread making. As we walked towards the book department, I casually asked what type of bread making she was interested in. She explained that her father had recently died. He had owned a bakery employing several staff, and she had unexpectedly inherited the business. The problem was that she knew absolutely nothing about baking bread but desperately wanted to keep the business alive and protect the livelihoods of the people who worked there.

Together we selected several books covering basic baking techniques and artisan breads. She bought three books and thanked me before leaving the store.

Several months later she returned carrying a basket of freshly baked speciality breads. She told me the books had helped her learn enough to continue running the family business successfully. The breads were her way of saying thank you. That moment fundamentally changed how I thought about retail.

I was not selling books, I was helping somebody preserve her father’s legacy, protect jobs and regain confidence during one of the most difficult periods of her life. 

That is customer experience; not slogans, loyalty schemes or self-checkout technology, but human understanding.

Retail was once full of moments like this

I also remember a colleague working in our music department who had an extraordinary ability to identify songs from customers humming fragments of tunes they had heard on the radio but could not name. Customers would arrive frustrated and embarrassed, humming vague melodies and apologising for not knowing the artist or title. Somehow, he would decode the mystery and guide them to the right record. Customers loved it, not because the transaction was efficient, but because they felt understood.

Another colleague in our greeting card department had a remarkable instinct for matching cards to emotional occasions. Customers often arrived unsure how to express what they wanted to say. She would ask thoughtful questions about the relationship, the situation and the personality of the recipient before selecting a card that captured the tone perfectly. She was not really selling greeting cards, she was helping people communicate emotion.

The best retail colleagues were never simply shelf-fillers or cashiers. They were interpreters of customer intent, emotion and uncertainty. That was the real value that physical retail once created.

What TG Jones misunderstood

The problems facing the former WH Smith high street business were real and substantial. Consumer behaviour changed dramatically. Online retail took huge market share in books, music and stationery. Footfall declined and costs increased.

But the deeper issue was relevance. Changing the name from WH Smith to TG Jones without materially changing the customer experience was never likely to reverse years of decline. Retailers sometimes confuse familiarity with loyalty. Customers do not continue shopping with a business because it has existed for 200 years, they stay loyal because the retailer continues to matter in their lives today.

Far too many retailers responded to online competition by becoming more operationally efficient while accidentally stripping away the very human qualities that differentiated physical retail in the first place. Stores became less inspiring, ranges became more generic, local individuality disappeared, colleagues became less empowered and customer interactions became more scripted.

At precisely the moment when online retailers dominated convenience, many physical retailers abandoned the emotional and human advantages that online competitors struggled to replicate.

The retailers rediscovering what matters

Interestingly, some retailers are now reversing this trend. A major factor behind the revival of Barnes & Noble and the continued success of Waterstones has been the decentralisation of buying decisions under James Daunt.

Instead of imposing heavily centralised ranges on every store, local teams regained greater influence over stock selection and merchandising. Stores recovered individuality and booksellers became curators again rather than simply operators.

That shift matters because discovery, expertise and human recommendation still have enormous value. Physical retail is not dying; it is generic retail that is dying and there is an important difference.

The leadership lesson many retailers still miss

The collapse of another familiar high street name should concern every retail leader because the lessons extend far beyond books or stationery. Customer experience is not created by branding exercises or technology rollouts. It is shaped by thousands of small human interactions.

It is shaped by whether colleagues feel ownership, whether they feel trusted, whether they can use judgement and whether they are encouraged to bring personality and expertise into customer conversations.

Happy employees really do create better customer experiences, which ultimately drive commercial outcomes. Customers can immediately sense the difference between colleagues who are emotionally engaged and colleagues who are simply executing tasks.

For years, retailers have pursued efficiency, consistency and centralisation. Many achieved those goals successfully. But in the process, some also standardised the humanity out of their stores.

Customers never really bought books

The more I reflect on the likely disappearance of TG Jones, the more I think the retail industry sometimes misunderstood what businesses like these were truly selling. Customers never really bought books, records or greeting cards. They bought possibility, confidence, discovery, identity, reassurance and human connection.

The retailers that still understand that have a future. The retailers that forget it may eventually discover that efficiency alone is not enough to make customers care.

At RetailCX, we specialise in helping organisations harness the power of leadership and employee engagement to enhance customer experiences. Contact us to learn how we can support your journey toward a more innovative and customer-centric future.