{
  "$type": "site.standard.document",
  "description": "The rebranding of WH Smith to TG Jones led to large and rapid declines in revenue - which means that the buyer of the brand did not actually undersatand what they were buying.",
  "path": "/2026/06/01/they-buried-smiths-now-thet.html",
  "publishedAt": "2026-06-01T02:15:48Z",
  "site": "at://did:plc:ykmjvgyfdhlropg3lqndtbi6/site.standard.publication/3mn42sqpuea2q",
  "textContent": "🤯 Wait❗️What❓ \"For non-UK readers, TG Jones is the new name for the high street branches of the venerable newsagents WH Smith’s\" 💬 Adam Tinworth 🔗 This came up in Adam’s short piece here. I had never previously heard of - or read about - ‘TG Jones’ - this rock I live under is clearly messing with my reality. Confirming that I have now completed nearly 5 minutes of internet analysis and am now qualified to appear on the BBC as a ‘Talking Head’ - let me give you my 5 cents … All of this seems to have gone very much to plan and fully expected … except … they vastly under estimated the brand value of W.H. Smiths. COUGH - in the 90s when their revenues were hitting multiple billions - in pounds - WHS ‘Brand Value’ was (conservatively) estimated to be £500MM. A series of missteps took care of that - but anyone can see that brand adds value. The problem with these financial wonks is that they seem to have no clue when it comes to sales and marketing. Much like the tech world doesn’t seem to get it. Much like the Entertainment world is missing that very same point. Back in the day of ‘the SQL Wars’ featuring Sybase, Informix, Ingres and Oracle - only one company emerged victorious and a recurring LJE meme at the time was that only Oracle properly had the tech to deliver. ‘Everyone else were just spouting marketing spiel’. Truth is Oracle was the Marketing machine - the rest of them did in fact have good to great tech - depending on the day of the week (replace today’s stories talking about LLM frontier models with SQL - and you’ll get the drift. For another comparison - Oracle had VHS - the rest had versions of Betamax. Funny how both comps sit right in the middle of Skydance today. Anyway - back to ‘Smiths’. Turns out that the one thing that happened that they did not expect was that turnover store-by-store fell - pretty much in line with store names being changed from WH Smiths to TG Jones. During the Sept 25 to March 26 - WHS stores maintained their revenue - TGJ stores declined around 12%.",
  "title": "They Buried Smiths. Now Thet Might Have To Bury TG Jones",
  "updatedAt": "2026-06-01T02:17:45Z"
}