‘Smiths’ – an essential part of British Life

WHSmith, known affectionately by many as ‘Smiths’, is one of the UK’s best loved high street shops. In just over 200 years they have grown from a single newsagent to having a store in 399 of the UK’s top 400 high streets. With over 800 stores in high streets, airports, railways, motorway service stations and hospitals, it is an essential location for people out shopping or travelling, to buy their favourite magazines, essential stationery, the latest bestselling novel or other holiday reading, or a treat for the children.

WHSmith has become an essential part of British life, stocking many items which it would be hard to find elsewhere on the high street. The huge range of magazines it sells is unmatched by any other store, its stock of popular books is extensive, and no other high street shop caters as well for the revision needs of today’s highly exam tested schoolchildren.

As well as its position as much more than a newsagent, WHSmith is taking on a new function in British life, with the announcement in 2007 that 70, or 1 in 8 of WH Smith’s branches will have a Post Office counter within them. BBC news story about the WHSmith Post Office counters

WHSmith has at other times been at the forefront of new developments in business. In 1966 WHSMITH developed a system for assigning a unique reference number to every book edition. This Standard Book Numbering code, or SBN, was adapted and adopted internationally as the ISBN system in 1970, and is still in use today, within the recently expanded 13 digit ISBN system.

Along with several other the UK’s largest retailers, WHSMith has opened a subsidiary in Jersey for distributing some items purchased online for under £18, thereby saving their customers the VAT which would otherwise have been chargeable.