The Tolkien-inspired outdoors shop is rated second-best on the high street by Which?. You know, that place your dad buys cagoules

Welcome to Rohan: the sensible face of retail competence

Name: Rohan.

Age: 47.

Appearance: A near-perfect model of retail heaven.

What? Where? Or, indeed – who? Rohan is a retail chain specialising in outdoor clothing and – furthermore, according to a Which? survey – the UK’s second-best high-street retailer.

But I’ve never heard of it. It has 56 shops around the country. It isn’t some little two-bit setup. You should have heard of it.

But I haven’t. Maybe that’s the reason why its customers like it so much: because out-of-touch people like you don’t even know it exists.



Oh, is this the shop where my dad buys his coats? Very possibly. Rohan does a very good line in lightweight, waterproof cagoules.

Big cagoule fans at Which?, are they? Maybe. Or maybe they are big fans of value for money and customer satisfaction, both of which Rohan excels in, apparently.

Hang on, isn’t Rohan from Lord of the Rings? That’s right. It lies to the south of the Fangorn forest, and is famed for its endless windswept pastures. Its inhabitants are known for being free spirits, which is why it was chosen as the name of a broadly well-run cagoule shop.

Bit nerdy, that. Yes, but that must be part of the appeal. Its founders were passionate enough to name it after a pretend place from a book about elves. That has to be a good thing, surely.

But Rohan wasn’t rated the best, was it? No. That was Richer Sounds, the hi-fi chain that places such a premium on customer satisfaction and employee wellbeing that its founder recently revealed that every employee will receive an average cash bonus of £8,000.

That’s fair enough. Which others made the list? Why are you asking? You don’t care about what shops people like. Admit it, you just want to know which shops are the crappest.

No, I’m really interested in hearing about retail competence. Oh, fine. So, specialist professional outlets such as Toolstation and Screwfix fared well in the survey, as did traditional retailers such as John Lewis and …

Oh God, this is boring! Tell me the crap ones! WH Smith is the crappest.

I knew it! Man, WH Smith is so crap, isn’t it? It’s like walking into the physical manifestation of persistent depressive disorder. Even the carpets look like they collapsed and died at some point in the mid-1980s.

I hate WH Smith. But, as a counterpoint, it is where a lot of people buy their books.

No, you’re thinking of the internet. Oh yeah.

How has WH Smith taken the news? Bullishly. A spokesperson called the survey “neither statistically relevant nor meaningful relative to our loyal customer base”.

And who are WH Smith’s loyal customer base, exactly? People who don’t know how to use the internet, I suppose. But my point is that Rohan is a good shop.

And WH Smith is a bad one. Well, yeah, that too.

Do say: “Rohan is the second-best shop on the high street.”

Don’t say: “Let’s enjoy it for six months until the internet kills it dead.”