Age is just a number. This line is usually trotted out by divorced men of a certain age by way of excusing their decision to date a 23-year-old. But these days it could just as easily apply to Britain’s beleaguered veteran high street chains – because, as it turns out, having a long and illustrious heritage that can be traced back hundreds of years means precisely nothing in the cutthroat world of modern shopping. Age really is just a number when it comes to retailers failing in the 21st century.

First came Woolworths (RIP). Although originally American, the brand was embraced by Brits after it crossed the pond in 1909, as familiar a staple in suburban shopping centres up and down the country as any of its homegrown peers. Woolies is where I used my birthday money to buy my first ever album on cassette; it’s where I would splurge pocket money reserves on eye-wateringly expensive pick’n’mix, whose astronomical price only became apparent once it was weighed at the till (by which point it was too late to back out). Life without Woolworths was unthinkable and yet, in the blink of an eye, it was all too real. A hundred years after the first UK shop opened in Liverpool, all 807 branches closed up for good in 2009 following the financial crash.

Next on the chopping block was national treasure Wilkinson’s – officially shortened to “Wilko” from 2012 onwards – whose last remaining stores limped quietly offstage in October 2023. Founded as a single hardware shop in Leicester in 1930, it didn’t quite hit the century mark before a rapid tumble into administration led to its 400 branches being axed. Where will prospective students buy their spatulas and starter-kitchen kits from now? Where will I pick up cheap fence paint, gas safety lighters and a bewildering assortment of screwdrivers on a whim?

Now, it seems that even WH Smith isn’t safe from falling into irrelevance and obscurity. One of the oldest mainstream names on the British high street, Smiths started life as a retailer on Little Grosvenor Street, central London, in 1792. Yes, that’s right – for more than 230 years, the now 500-strong chain has been as dependable a presence as Boots and M&S. Yet its future is suddenly highly uncertain: WH Smith’s parent company of the same name has hung a “for sale” sign over all high street branches in order to focus energy on its sexier, more successful travel arm found in airports and train stations around the world.

The company confirmed the move this weekend, saying it was “exploring potential strategic options for this profitable and cash-generative part of the group, including a possible sale … There can be no certainty that any agreement will be reached, and further updates will be provided as and when appropriate.”

There’s no guarantee that a potential buyer will keep the name or branding. No guarantee that the high street won’t be stripped of yet another old-timer, replaced by, in all likelihood, more e-cigarette shops with unhinged names like “Vape Chaos”.

“Not Smiths!”, I want to scream! Not the fantasy land full of books and exotic stationery where I spent hours as a kid, poring over “Groovy Chick” pencil cases in a bid to pick the one that would make me appear most worldly and worthy of befriending come the new school year! I want to rant and rail and protest against our shopping stalwarts becoming collateral damage amid the current unwinnable war waged by online competitors, the unassailable digital behemoths like Amazon and Shein. I feel a paroxysm of patriotism that makes me want to tie a union jack around my neck to form a rudimentary cloak and find a British bulldog to sing “God Save the King” at.

And yet, now I come to think of it… when was the last time I actually went into a WH Smith – let alone bought something? When was the last time you did? Could it be more than a year ago? Two? I seem to remember popping in to buy a new diary planner for my Filofax (yes, really), only to find that it was twice the price of purchasing one online. In fact, as I recall, everything in there seemed at once unnecessary and irrationally, exorbitantly expensive, from niche hobby magazines to dated-looking greetings cards, floral “thank you” stationery to “dream journal” notebooks.

Even for shoppers less motivated by price, there’s an obviously superior alternative purveyor for nearly every genre of WH Smith stock. An independent bookshop or Waterstones with a cosy reading nook, reader events and coffee machine makes for a far more enjoyable shopping experience; a card shop that specifically sells quirky, quality designs – ones that don’t look like they were all drawn up by someone’s great aunt – feels more fit for purpose in 2025. And, given that even beloved millennial favourite Paperchase couldn’t keep fighting the good fight on the stationery front (the retailer ceased trading in 2023), perhaps there’s simply no longer enough of a market for endless blank-paged books with pleasing covers.

And then there are the shop floors themselves: scuffed walls; coarse industrial carpets underfoot. When did they all get so… tired? So faded? So sad? None of it seems to have been changed since the Nineties. Maybe it hasn’t.

On reflection, the writing has been on the wall for quite some time. WH Smith was ranked the worst shop on the British high street six times in nine years from 2010-2019, according to a Which? poll, with consumers slamming its poor service, high prices and shabby shops. Arguably, little has changed in the intervening years.

Woolworths and Wilko may have suffered from the same problem – trading for too long on dwindling supplies of nostalgia that could never quite make up for the scruffy interiors and nebulous array of retail stock. Stock that was, for the most part, a great deal cheaper online. These days, our shopping preferences are predicated on cost or experience; stores that seem perpetually stuck in a time warp, without the low price tags to match, deliver on neither front.

It’s not all doom and gloom for our legacy brands though. Just look at Marks and Spencer’s astonishing, phoenix-like resurgence from the ashes. After a series of viral design moments and influencer endorsements, the 140-year-old retailer revealed at the end of last year that the average age of its M&S customer had fallen by five years, while the business tempted 1.4 million new online shoppers over the 12 months to 2024. In October, figures revealed that its food arm had attracted 800,000 new customers in a single month, and that M&S’s total share of the UK market had leapt up from 3.4 to 3.7 per cent year on year.

Clearly, growth is possible. But the secret to staying relevant? Adapt or die, as the saying goes. If WH Smith chose not to do the former, can we really be surprised that the grim reaper of retail is finally coming to collect?