We’re bringing shine to WH Smith, says boss Carl Cowling

It’s a busy morning at Birmingham Airport and families with their suitcases on wheels crowd the aisles of

WH Smith. Chief Executive Carl Cowling moves deftly around them, showing me the best-selling books of the season.

The most popular read this summer was Yellowface, by RF Kuang, a satirical thriller about the publishing world. A biography about Taylor Swift also flew off the shelves.

But Cowling also tells me about the importance of his travel business to the group – which includes WH Smith branches at airports, train stations and, somewhat oddly, hospitals. The division, he says, is “growing at a rate of knots”. Sales now account for almost 75 per cent of the total.

According to Cowling, WH Smith’s mission now is to be a ‘one-stop shop’ for the traveller.

For Britons of a certain age, WH Smith was synonymous with pencil cases, compasses and protractors as children returned to school after the summer holidays.

But the group also runs tech-focused stores under the inMotion brand, plus independent bookstores. From its humble roots as a stationer and bookseller, the company has set its sights on global domination and an empire that stretches to Las Vegas.

Cowling, 50, is pursuing his goal through extensive market research into people’s tastes in reading material, snacks and souvenirs.

The Birmingham Airport branch is selling T-shirts with the Brummie slogan ‘alright bab’.

In addition to sandwiches, the snacks also include more adventurous dishes such as kefir yogurt and poké bowls.

For forgetful packers, there are expensive hair straighteners, and Cowling’s personal travel essential, “a good pair of headphones.” In Las Vegas, you can buy sequined dresses and jackets for a glittering night out.

The company now has around 100 stores in the fun and gambling city, after buying US travel agency Marshall Retail for around £325m in 2019.

Many British brands have tried and failed to break into America, but Cowling believes this focus on airport retail is the key to success.

America isn’t the only foreign country where you can pop into a WH Smith for the essentials you need for your trip. There are now 762 locations in airports around the world.

And unlike the UK’s signature blue and white branded stores, casino and hotel stores are designed for their specific location and blend in perfectly with the surroundings.

Airports and Las Vegas are far removed from the company’s early days. Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna opened their first newsagents in Mayfair, central London, in 1792.

The company expanded into the railways, offering passengers reading material for the journey, and the shops then expanded into the High Street.

But why is the company called WH Smith and not HW Smith, after the founder?

Henry’s son William Henry Smith eventually took over the business from his father and it was he who named the company.

Cowling is committed to that heritage. There are no plans for more High Street stores in the UK beyond the existing 520, but he insists this is “still a great business, still a profitable business” and one in which he continues to invest.

One of his latest moves is to open locations in 76 Toys R Us stores by Christmas, with more planned.

Like other retailers, WH Smith has had to invest heavily in safety measures for its store staff, who are among the millions of people increasingly exposed to abuse and threats.

“There needs to be a more serious approach to addressing it. It’s a bad situation where people can feel vulnerable when they go to work. It seems to me that it’s only going to get worse,” he says.

There will be at least one “very serious” case of physical abuse in his stores every week, he says. The company has installed buttons that can instantly record an interaction with an abusive customer and send it to a support centre, which can alert the police if necessary. But Cowling hopes the new Home Secretary, Yvette Cooper, will raise awareness of the problem.

Earlier this month, WH Smith updated investors on its financial year ending August 31.

Group turnover increased by 7 percent compared to last year, mainly due to a 10 percent growth in travel activities.

Cowling says his philosophy is to keep things simple. “I think where companies and leadership go wrong is when they get really disconnected and try to overcomplicate things,” he says.

He has been a retailer all his life and started his career at Comet, an electronics chain that went bankrupt in 2012.

He then went on to work for the electricity company Dixons for more than ten years, where he rose to become director of the airport retail division.

Many of these stores were acquired by WH Smith in April 2021, after the COVID pandemic devastated the sector.

While WH Smith has focused on travel hubs, Cowling says he isn’t losing any sleep over the idea that a pandemic will bring the sector to its knees again.

“I find it hard to imagine that we’ll ever have to deal with restrictions like that again,” he says. “I mean, never say never.”

Cowling is optimistic about running a business in Britain, Chancellor of the Exchequer Rachel Reeves has warned.

“People can feel a little unhappy sometimes, but I think we have a great environment,” he says. “Compared to other places in the world, we have a strong economy.”

His positive tone is supported by industry data.

The International Air Transport Association expects global passenger numbers to surpass pre-Covid levels for the first time this year. As we browse the store, a customer seizes the opportunity to ask if the Meal Deal can be reduced by 50p. It costs £5.50 for the standard offering and £8 for a more luxurious one.

Cowling politely welcomes the feedback. But are the prices – such as £1.59 for a small chocolate bar – a little hard to swallow?

“It’s a very high-cost environment,” Cowling says later. “An airport is busier than any shopping mall, so the rents are much higher. We open a store at 3 a.m. and close at 11 p.m..”

Airports also have bureaucracy: everything that comes in has to be unloaded and scanned by security before it can go on the shelves. This explains the higher prices, he says. “What we try to do is make sure that customers feel like they’re getting value for money by making sure we have good deals,” he says.

He is also optimistic about the London stock market, despite the pervasive gloom over foreign takeovers and an exodus of companies seeking to list in New York.

Shares closed near their highest level in the past year on Friday and the company is estimated to be worth £1.87bn.

“American funds are investing less and less of their money in British companies,” he says.

‘There hasn’t really been a desire to invest in the UK stock market in the same way. I think there has been a bit of fear after Brexit.

“But we’re still a strong economy, right? These things always go in cycles.”

The company will ‘certainly’ remain on the London Stock Exchange, he says: ‘We are WH Smith, we will remain on the British Stock Exchange.’