To think Debenhams and WHSmith are the worst shops on the High St

[Shekinah1]

Read an article this week saying that the owner of JD is negotiating to buy the chain.

The article is paywalled (FT) but it’s speculates whether this is an attempt to revitalise or slim down the group or move it to an online store.
However I’m shocked that it has been able to keep going as a business.

Beyond the Standard department store makeup section it has nothing worthwhile to buy. The brands are usually dated and unfashionable. The shoe section is chaotic.

The bra section is ok but not as good as M&S and other places and then there is just the weird sweet stuff that seems to be randomly doted around the store. The cafe section always seems a bit dead of life. It’s sad because these stores have potential but it just seems like whoever has run Debenhams is stuck in 1991.

WHSmith is overpriced on stationary. It has morphed into this shop that excels in nothing. It’s book section is not as good as Waterstones with less range, it’s food and drinks (meal deal) is overpriced and not as good as the supermarkets and boots for that matter. The only thing it seems to excel in is huge bars of Galaxy and huge 1l bottles of water.

I’m sad staff in these chains might lose their jobs but really what are these two shops offering to the High st?

People keep saying the High St is dead but I disagree I think that once shops like these either reform and improve or disappear it will become a lot better.

many if the concessions that made up Debenhams will have gone into admin. soon.

I was reading an article from "the retailer" about about to/just gone into administration Edinburgh Woollen Mills this afternoon; they seem to have spent the last decade rescuing fallen brands; several occasions competing with the JD Sports Group, which seems to be following the same business model. (although reported to have dropped out of the bidding for Debenhams).

WH Smiths has obviously been impacted by Amazon/fewer people buying print newspapers, kept alive by all the travel concessions where you need a book and a large bar of chocolate for your journey at stations and airports, which are currently a bit deserted.
It seemed to try and cope with this by closing lot of non-travel stores and expanding to vast swathes of non-book stuff - unfortunately that made the book sections too small to be viable, certainly too small to warrant a visit to one of the increasingly rare (in London) stores.

I used to love WH Smiths but my local one is now awful, it is so dated and dingy and an unpleasant environment to be in before you take into account the poor ranges and high price. They also use the jobcentre schemes (can't remember what it is called) where people work for 30 hours a week for their benefits. I'm sure the jobcentre will also pay them training grants for taking these workers so they are making a profit from unethical labour.

Evans is the worst for me, they used to be great and one of the few places on the high street that catered for plus sizes. I love their skinny jeans but everything else is overpriced polyester tat which doesn't survive more than a couple of washes.

The thing is Primark and Sports Direct seem to be doing well. I personally do not like these shops but I can at least understand the appeal/how they survive.

H&M is the most underrated on the High St.

I love H and M for both kids stuff and my own. It's better quality than primark but very good for basics (hoodies, tshirts, coats, joggers etc) for DS and I like their sports wear. Now DD is teen, she shops there less although bought a mens sweatshirt recently as apparently oversized is in.
We do go to primark for tshirts, tights, pjs and underwear.
DD ordered s top from shein last year and that was really cheap and nasty.i wouldn't be in a hurry to get anything from there again.

H&M is the most underrated on the High St

H&M is very hit and miss ( that must be what the H and M stands for )
The website is unfathomable

Some things are really nice .
They used to have nice jumpers but now they're short and really boxy .

They have a circular stand of blouses , I think "Oh they look nice" but one touch of the fabric , its symthetic and hard and scratchy .

The Mens section for my DS (20) is really good though . Good selection of jeans , soft TShirts in every colour and really nice jackets , underwear etc.

Our Debenhams is lovely and has some really nice clothes. I'll be sad if it goes.

@00100001

I like the mantaray clothes from Debenhams

Me too. I also like their nightwear. I'm still mourning the loss of BHS, though. I used to love it in there. 😢

There are 3 WHSmiths within 30 minutes walking distance from me- although one is a very small branch- and all have been made worse by having a large section given over to the Post Office, so the shelves seem very squashed together. The greetings cards are crazy prices, although they do stock quite niche magazines, and 75 calorie Red dark chocolate bars.

WH Smith feels contempt for its customers. We're all "marks" who can be fleeced out of £1.60 for a small bottle of water at the airport and £3.90 for a small tube of toothpaste at a train station. Then they'll demean staff by making them ask if we want a giant chocolate bar with our newspaper. Like we can't pick up an overpriced chocolate bar if we want one.
The same management appear to have moved to Superdrug.

The post office lives in our local WHSmiths, that’s the only reason I go in there. It’s so expensive.

I quite like Debenhams and it’s randomness. It’s such a big store though if it goes it will leave a massive gap in the high street, quite literally.

Our town has a whsmiths and ...two in the middling sized train station. The one in town also has a post office in it - going there to do a passport application was probably the last time I've been in there in...ten years??

Our Debenhams was great for clothes though - loads of my work wear came from their own collection, or red herring (which I can't find many other places) and I used it so much before my wedding recently (husband's suit, my shoes, underwear, nightwear, etc.) However, I did go looking for kids stuff recently and it was shocking once out of the clothing floor, like a jumble-sale.

H and m also sell great maternity wear!

I cant think of one thing other than pen refills I would go to a whsmith for, and i can get them cheaper in tesco.
Not bought anything from debenhams since my son was little, im a 30e bust and they had 2 bras in my size, one of them was beige.

WHSmith upper management has such contempt for its staff.
They decided after furlough to get rid of all managers and instead of a manager in each store they have 1 for 3 stores. So the Supervisors are basically the new managers for less pay.

Then they moved the redundancy date back 3 times. So the people who were being made redundant that managed to get a new job but we're due to start after the old redundancy date, lost their redundancy pay when it got put back.

Can't wait for that shop to disappear, staff deserve better.

I like Debenhams. One of the only high street stores that sell decent large cupped bras.
M and s are shite btw.
W h Smith is awful and I don't know how still open.

My Debenhams is shite and not surprised my local one closed during the first lockdown

Love WHSmith only real chain shop in my local town left. V impressed with their click and collect service

They’re both as naff as fuck.

Smiths only survives because they have a captive audience at stations and airports - I think the only time I go in one is at Heathrow to stock up on magazines after I’ve gone through security so they don’t count in my baggage allowance. Apart from magazines and newspapers, their shops are a monument to overpriced tat.

As for Debenhams, their store near me (now closed) was tacky - lots of “faux up-market” concessions that were nothing of the sort, cheapy brands that were well past their heyday and yet more overpriced tat. For decent makeup or perfume brands I’d go to John Lewis instead where the customer service was better, where the ambiance wasn’t akin to an aircraft hanger and where I felt that my custom was actually appreciated.

Our Debenham has gone. Our WHSmith should follow it. It's grim, dirty and depressing. You would think they had a spotted carpet but its actually the amount of trodden in gum that's stuck to it. Ugh. Vile. Use it solely because its got the post office in it.

As EThreeWood said, WHSmiths have treated their staff appallingly. They have made over 1500 managers redundant, replacing them with Cluster managers who will be running up to 5 stores on not much more money than a single store manager was paid. The bigger stores will have a Team Leader - essentially a manager doing exactly what the store manager did but on a greatly reduced salary. Smaller stores are expected to run on just one staff member per shift, with no overtime or overlapping shifts allowed. Funnily enough, the application rate for the new roles from the existing managers and area managers was considerably lower than Smiths anticipated! But as longer as the shareholders are happy.......

WHSmith used to sell good quality stationery, now it seems to be competing with Smiggle.
It's so sad.
Their book range is dire and overpriced.
Their greetings cards are good but the endless chocolate promotions are annoying.

As to Debenhams... last bought anything there in the nineties.

The thing I find about Debs is that if I’m actually looking for a specific item - say a particular coloured hat or a coat of a particular length, I’m more likely to find said item there than in all the TKMAXXs or John Lewises that I might visit. However, if I go there first, I won’t find it. I have to try everywhere else beforehand.
I’ve actively tried to avoid WH Smug since they refused to stock Private Eye in the 1960s, but yes, it looks a mess on the odd occasion when I have gone in (Post Office mostly).

Really disliked Debenhams, made me feel ancient every time I walked in! But WHS, love it! Our store is super friendly and knowledgeable about books, stationery etc!

I can remember the proper WH Smith as it used to be. One of the cornerstones of the high street.

How did it all go so wrong? They have been going downhill for 15 years at least and it is a miracle they've lasted this long.

I have a really big chip on my shoulder about how shot WH Smith is. It used to be a respectable stationers but now it's overpriced pencils with gross chocolate being flogged at the tills. There's actually a Twitter account about how shit it is @WHS_carpet

How did it all go so wrong?

Private equity got involved. Always the death knell for a company’s quality - it’ll be rinsed dry so the new owners can afford another swan-upholstered jet.

Debenhams has been terrible for at least five years.

They had some success with the ‘designers at Debenhams’ concept in the 1990s then went a bit mad with it. Too many designers, then the quality went down and it was oceans of crap polyester with a ‘designer’ label glued on. Did anybody really want a badly finished synthetic dress with Sienna Miller’s sister’s name grafted onto it? Or a men’s boring checked shirt that they claimed had been designed by John Rocha (ie John Rocha had looked at it for five seconds and said, “yeah, that’ll do, my invoice is in the post”)?

The homewares used to be good: genuinely lovely and unusual bedding etc., but now it’s yawn poly cotton yawn. M&S and John Lewis wipe the floor with them.

The beauty hall was the worst on the high street for a long time, although it has recently been eclipsed in crapness by the all-new House of Fraser Sports Direct. The people on the Debenhams counters would have no idea about the brands they were selling: you’d ask at the Lancôme counter about the new, heavily advertised, O de Lancôme variant and they’d look at you blankly. Or you’d go to the Dior counter knowing exactly what you wanted, and the assistant would be deep in conversation about something with another customer and wouldn’t even acknowledge you for five minutes. I’d just walk off: stuff you and your commission if you can’t even be polite.

Their own brand shoes were nice and a bit different twenty years ago, and were made of leather, suede or decent fabrics like grosgrain. No more: it’s all plastic or cheap satin.

The lingerie was always really poorly stocked. I attempted to buy some Spanx knickers at Debenhams a few years ago (trying to fit into v small frock) and the rail was pitiful. Looked a real mess, only one or at most two of each item, everything mixed up.

I genuinely see no reason to go there any more. Actually the store in Meadowhall wasn’t quite as bad, but that’s because it had recently been done up and seemed to have quite a good range of concessions, but I still wouldn’t go out of my way to visit.