In 1882 in Cashel Street, Christchurch, George Hawkes Whitcombe a teacher of French and George Tombs, a printer joined in partnership. In 1883 the company was among the first registered under the Companies Act 1882. It had market dominance for several decades. Thousands of schoolchildren were taught with the aid of Whitcombe's Progressive Primers and later enjoyed Whitcombe's Story Books such as The Adventures of Hoppity Bobtail. In 1971 the group as a whole was merged with Dunedin-based firm Coulls Somerville Wilkie to become Whitcoulls, and has since been sold several times. It now operates as a retail chain only. The limited company itself described here has changed its name to reflect the changes in ownership. It became the holding company Printing and Packaging Corporation Limited at the time of the merger. It became Whitcoulls Group Limited in 1982, WGL Group Limited in 1993 and has been known as WGL Retail Holdings Limited since 1995. After a period under the ownership of UK company W. H. Smith, in 2004 Whitcoulls was sold to REDgroup a retail operations company owned by Pacific Equity Partners, a subsidiary of UK-based insurance company Prudential. On 17 February 2011, RedGroup Retail (including the Borders, Angus & Robertson as well as Whitcoulls chains) were placed into voluntary administration with Ferrier Hodgson appointed as administrators. On 26 May 2011 it was announced that the company had been sold to Project Mark Ltd , owned by the Norman family who have a history of turning around troubled companies.

[adapted from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Whitcoulls]