With 150 former WH Smith stores likely to close, how has the TG Jones rebrand landed with consumers?

Last week, Modella Capital said TG Jones – the high street chain that traded as WH Smith until its acquisition last year – would face 150 store closures under a new restructuring plan. The parent company also claimed the brand could potentially “collapse into insolvency” by summer 2026 if restructuring plans were not approved by creditors.

Around the same time, the news also broke that Modella had charged TG Jones some £2.9m in royalty fees to use the new branding. So it’s worth asking: with the company in a difficult situation, how do the public value the TG Jones brand? So it’s worth asking: with the company in a difficult situation, how do the public value the TG Jones brand? Since WH Smith is still operating in railway stations, service stations, and airports, we can make a direct comparison using YouGov BrandIndex data.

WH Smith has a considerable lead on TG Jones in terms of Awareness, with 93.4% of the public recognising the brand compared to 44.5% for TG Jones. Given that the former has a two-century-plus headstart on the latter, this is perhaps to be expected.

But when we narrow the audience down to consumers who are aware of each brand, WH Smith is still more well-liked. Impression scores for TG Jones, which measure general positive and negative sentiment, sit at 3.6; WH Smith’s are 15.9. This carries over into other metrics. WH Smith, for example, is still considered to represent better QualityQquality (12.9 vs. 2.4 for TG Jones), and Value (1.6 compared to -2.7-2.7 for TG Jones). Reputation scores, a measure of whether consumers would be proud or embarrassed to work for a brand, are 5.9 for WH Smith; the successor brand fares rather worse (-2.2).

One consolation may be that the gap in customercCustomer Satisfaction scores is narrower: WH Smith’s is 27.7, just 2.3 points ahead of TG Jones. This may suggest that the in-store experience is not dramatically different. The same may be said of Consideration scores, which are 18.9 for WH Smith and 14.7 for TG Jones: a 4.1-point gap.

WeSo wWe can’t say that the public have soured on TG Jones, but on the evidence, it would be hard to conclude that they’re convinced by the new branding. Still: as mentioned, the WH Smith brand was well-established, and the TG Jones name may gain ground in time (if the brand itself survives).