This Retailer Has Figured Out How To Profit In The One Place Amazon Doesn’t Reach (Yet)

Pheww, you’ve made it through the airport security checkpoint in one piece, and have arrived at your gate with time to spare. A trip to the shop beckons for the essentials—a $4 bottle of water, candy bar and a magazine. Uggh, you forgot your headphones. Again. Oh well, here’s a pair and, hey, maybe this: a “Santa Please Stop Here” 500-piece jigsaw puzzle. In much of Europe, parts of Asia, Australia (and soon, parts of the U.S.), that quick but pricy airport splurge will likely happen at a WH Smith, the British high street retailer that harkens back to the 1790s when Henry Walton Smith and his wife Anna started a news vending operation in London. The news business isn’t the retail racket it was once was, but that hasn’t stopped WH Smith from growing into a global giant with more than 1,500 shops, including a healthy business at train stations and airports across 30 countries outside the U.K. Read more at Fortune.