Start Licensing’s Ian Downes takes a look at some railway station retailing this week.
I find myself taking quite a lot of train journeys these days. As a consequence I transit through stations like Waterloo and Marylebone on my way to meetings.
This recently worked in my favour as I was on the hunt for some greeting cards. I had a lot of choice retail wise at Waterloo with Postmark, Oliver Bonas, WHSmith, Foyles, Marks & Spencer and Scribbler all on site. All of them sell cards. Great choice for the consumer but quite competitive for the retailers.
Of course, to a larger and less extent all of these retailers sell other products beyond cards. I imagine they were all attracted into the station environment because stations have footfall and bring retail traffic. Railway station retailing no doubt brings challenges around product mix, promotional support and customer loyalty. And, of course, competition.
WHSmith Travel focuses heavily on food and drink blended with books, magazines and newspapers. It has developed a strategy of ‘meal deals’ and product promotions to drive engagement. But it sells other products alongside this mix including cards. It is also a good example of a retailer which makes prodigious use of FSDUs and clip strips to increase its selling space.
Oliver Bonas‘ product mix includes giftware, apparel, stationery, books and cards. One theme in-store is a focus on personalised products, with a lot of product such as mugs and keyrings that feature letters of the alphabet.
When I see ranges like this I always think it is time for Mattel to revive the Scrabble gifting range which Wild & Wolf did so well with a few years ago. Apologies if the Scrabble alphabet is in the market and I missed it. But Wild & Wolf’s range was very impactful.
Oliver Bonas seems to take a light touch to licensing although there were a number of brands featured in the book offer such as the restaurant Dishoom. It also carries a good selection of board games and card games with an emphasis on social gaming.
Arguably licensed games might sell well in this context. Like a number of other retailers at the moment, Oliver Bonas was offering a good range of Mother’s Day cards. Retailers, unsurprisingly, seem to see Mother’s Day as a good card selling opportunity and are pushing it heavily.
The Cards Galore branch at Marylebone was certainly backing Mother’s Day and had its displays front of store on the concourse. One licensed highlight in the offer was a selection of RHS Mother’s Day cards featuring floral artwork.
Marks & Spencer‘s primary focus seems to be on ‘grab and go’ food with an emphasis on meals, sandwiches, drinks and snacks.
However it does offer other product selections including gift options like biscuits and confectionery in tins, plus flowers and plants. It also sells greeting cards and like Cards Galore currently has a strong offering of Mother’s Day cards which include some licensed card designs like Peter Rabbit. Like WHSmith, it makes good use of FSDUs at till points.
Foyles at Waterloo is, as previously reported, a recently refurbished store. There are numerous examples of licensing in-store across a number of categories. Given Foyles’ core focus on books, a lot of its product selections in other categories like plush, cards and games lean into the publishing world.
One interesting feature I noticed about the Scribbler shop at Waterloo is that it includes a digital kiosk which allows consumers to customise and print their own cards. Unfortunately I couldn’t try it as the shop was closed for a stock take, but I thought this was a good example of how retailers are embracing technology to enhance their product offer, service and range. I’m not sure what designs are available via the digital kiosk, but would imagine that this is a great opportunity for licensed brands to extend their reach. Indeed it could be a way that a retailer like Scribbler could capitalise on ‘hot’ trends.
It was interesting to see Postmark at Waterloo. I am familiar with its shop in Wimbledon Village. I have always found its shops to be well presented and welcoming. It has some nice touches such as a table where you can sit and write a recently purchased card. Greetings on the go. I noticed in the Waterloo store that it was supporting heritage brands and licensing. Given the location near Bankside it was no surprise to see greeting cards from the Tate on sale. It also had a good selection of stationery lines featuring other London-based heritage brands like the V&A and the British Museum. It also carried some Sara Miller stationery products. It seems to be a shop that is well tuned into the location and customers.
I did wonder if the individual shops at Waterloo considered their neighbours when selecting and stocking product. Do they try to offer products that aren’t available in the other shops? This level of micro management might be impracticable, but I guess having competitors on your doorstep in such a unique retail environment can create challenges.
Moving out of the station environment, it has been good to see how well the Lush x Shaun the Sheep collaboration has been rolled out into store by Lush. I have visited five of its stores now including the ones on Waterloo and Victoria stations – product is in-store and well displayed. It was also good to hear the staff talk so positively about the product and with good knowledge of it. It is a reminder that collaborations like this one can live or die around the retail roll-out. As more collaborations with specific and specialist retailers come to fruition, I think there will be a greater need to make sure things are delivered well at retail.
Retail collaborations offer licensing a real opportunity to spread its wings and to reach new retail channels. It does seem to be the ‘age of the collab’ but it does also remind me that retailers like Woolworths used to like developing their own ranges some 25 years ago to offer a point of difference in the market. Maybe these sort of deals were the forerunner of today’s ‘collabs’. The motivation for retailers running these sort of partnership is probably as it was for Woolworths, but retailers have got better at making the most of the opportunities and haven’t overlooked that the secret to a successful collaboration includes making sure it is delivered effectively in-store.
For the record I did buy some greeting cards on my last railway retail expedition. I will be looking for a Well Done card to send to Lush on my next visit. I will also find one for Richard North and the WOW Stuff team. They have had a lot of success in the recent run of toy awards with the Real FX Disney Stitch puppet. It is good to see a licensed product doing so well – I think WOW Stuff’s success is a good showcase for licensing in general.
Indeed Richard also appeared in the Business section of the Sunday Times in the ‘How I Made It’ feature. It was a very positive article and another good ‘advert’ for licensing. Definitely merits a Well Done card.
Ian Downes runs Start Licensing, an independent brand licensing agency. His X handle is @startlicensing and on Instagram he is @iandownesphotos – he would welcome your suggestions for what to look out for.
