Everything about F W Woolworth Company totally explained
New York, NY
| industry =
Retail
| key_people =
| products =
Clothing,
footwear,
bedding,
furniture,
jewelry,
beauty products,
consumer electronics and housewares
| num_employees =
| parent =
| subsid =
Woolco (defunct
1983 in the U.S., Canadian stores sold to
Wal-Mart in
1994)
Woolworths Group plc (separate
1982)
Woolworth GmbH (separate
1998)
Kinney Shoe Company (
acquired 1963), now
Foot Locker (successor)}}
The
F. W. Woolworth Company (often referred to as
Woolworth's) was a
retail company that was one of the original
American five-and-dime stores. The first Woolworth's store was founded, with a
loan of $300, in
1878 by
Frank Winfield Woolworth. Despite growing to be one of the largest
retail chains in the world through most of the 20th century, increased competition led to its decline beginning in the
1980s. In
1997, F. W. Woolworth Company converted itself into a sporting goods retailer, closing its remaining retail stores operating under the "Woolworth's"
brand name and renaming itself Venator Group. By
2001, the company focused exclusively on the sporting goods market, changing its name to the present
Foot Locker Inc .
Retail chains using the Woolworth name survive in the
United Kingdom,
Germany,
Austria,
Mexico, and
South Africa. The similarly-named Woolworth's
supermarkets in
Australia and
New Zealand are operated by
Woolworths Limited, a separate company with no historical links to the F. W. Woolworth Company or Foot Locker, Inc.
History
Origin
The F.W. Woolworth Co. was among the first
five-and-dime stores, which sold
discounted general merchandise at
fixed prices, usually five or ten cents,
undercutting the prices of other local merchants. Woolworth's, as the stores popularly became known, was one of the first American retailers to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle and select without the assistance of a
sales clerk. Earlier retailers had kept all merchandise behind a counter, and customers presented the clerk with a list of items they wished to buy.
After working in a
dry goods store in
Watertown,
New York, Frank Winfield Woolworth opened his first Woolworth’s store in
Utica, New York, in
1878, but the store failed within a year. However, a second store he opened on
June 21,
1879 in
Lancaster,
Pennsylvania, became a success. Frank Woolworth brought his brother Charles Sumner Woolworth into the business, and together they opened more stores, often in
partnership with other business associates. The Woolworth brothers also entered into partnerships with “friendly rivals” to maximize
inventory purchasing power for both parties.
Rise and expansion
In
1910, Frank Woolworth commissioned the construction of the
Woolworth Building in
New York City. This building was entirely paid for in cash. It was completed in
1913 and was the
tallest building in the world until
1930. It also served as the company’s
headquarters until it was sold by the F.W. Woolworth Company’s successor, the Venator Group, in
1998.
By
1911, there were six chains of affiliated stores operating in the United States and
Canada. That year, Frank and Charles incorporated the F. W. Woolworth Company and through a
merger brought all 596 stores together under one corporate entity. One of the "friendly rival" predecessor chains included several stores initially opened as Woolworth & Knox stores starting as early as
September 20,
1884 as well as S. H. Knox & Co. 5 & 10 Cent Stores opened after an
1889 buyout by his cousin,
Seymour H. Knox I. Knox's chain grew to 98 U.S. and 13 Canada stores by the time of the corporate consolidation in
1911.
Fred Kirby added 96 stores,
Earle Charlton added 35, Charles Sumner Woolworth added 15, and William Moore added 2.
The stores eventually incorporated lunch counters after the success of the counters in the first store in the UK in Liverpool and served as general gathering places, a precursor to the modern shopping mall
food court. A Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina became the setting for a significant event during the civil rights movement
(see below).
The Woolworth's concept was widely copied, and five-and-ten-cent stores (also known as five-and-dime stores) were a fixture in American downtowns through the
1960s, and became
anchors for
suburban strip malls by the mid
1970s. Criticisms that five-and-dime stores drove local merchants out of business would repeat themselves in the early 21st century, when
big box discount stores became popular. However, many five-and-dime stores were locally owned or
franchised, as are many
dollar stores today.
In the
1960s, the five-and-dime concept evolved into the larger
discount store format. In
1962, Woolworths founded a discount chain called
Woolco. This was the same year as its competitors opened similar retail chains that sold merchandise at a discount: the
S.S. Kresge Company opened
Kmart;
Dayton Company opened
Target; and
Sam Walton opened his first
Wal-Mart store.
By Woolworth’s 100th anniversary in
1979, it had become the largest department store chain in the world, according to the
Guinness Book of World Records.
Expansion
Woolworth's expansion led to
specialty store acquisitions. In
1963, Woolworth purchased the
Kinney Shoe Corporation and operated it as a
subsidiary. That led to specialty shoe store expansion, including
Stylco in
1967,
Susie Casuals in
1968, and
Foot Locker in
1974.
Woolworth also
diversified its portfolio of specialty stores in the 1980s, including
Afterthoughts,
Northern Reflections, and
Champs Sports. By 1989, the company was pursuing an aggressive strategy of multiple specialty store formats targeted at enclosed
shopping malls. The idea was that if a particular
retail concept failed at a given mall, the company quickly could replace it with a different one. The company's purported goal was to operate 10 various specialty stores in each major American shopping mall, but this never came to pass as Woolworth never was able to develop that number of successful specialty retail formats. This activity, however, did lead to the development of the successful Foot Locker and Northern Reflections apparel shops, as well as
Best Of Times, a
timepiece retailer.
Decline
In
1989, Woolworth purchased
Champs Sports, leading to the development of the
Woolworth Athletic Group.
The growth and expansion of the company contributed to its downfall. The Woolworth company moved away from its
five-and-dime roots and placed less emphasis on its
department store chain as it focused on its specialty stores. But the company was unable to compete with other chains that had eroded its
market share. While it was a success in
Canada, the
Woolco chain closed in the United States in
1983. On
October 15,
1993, Woolworths embarked on a
restructuring plan that included closing half of its 800-plus
general merchandise stores in the United States and converting its Canadian stores to a
closeout division named
The Bargain! Shop. Woolco and Woolworth survived in Canada until
1994, when the majority of its stores there were sold to
Wal-Mart. Stores that were not purchased by Wal-Mart were converted to The Bargain! Shop stores.
Transition
Still with the decline of the signature stores, Woolworth marched on with a new focus toward athletic goods on
January 30,
1997, acquiring the
mail-order catalog athletic retailer
Eastbay.
On
July 17,
1997, Woolworths closed its remaining department stores in the U.S. and changed its corporate name to Venator. In that same year, Wal-Mart replaced Woolworths on the
Dow Jones Industrial Average. Analysts at the time cited the lower prices of the large
discount stores and the expansion of
supermarket grocery stores -- which had begun to stock merchandise also sold by five-and-dime stores -- as contributors to Woolworth's decline in the late 20th century.
In
1999, Venator moved out of the
Woolworth building in
New York City to offices on
34th Street. On
October 20,
2001, the company changed names again; this time, it took the name of its top retail performer and became
Foot Locker, Inc. Foot Locker stores chiefly sell athletic clothing and
footwear.
Greensboro sit-in
February 1,
1960, four
African-American students sat down at a
segregated lunch counter in a
Greensboro,
North Carolina Woolworth's store. They were refused service, touching off six months of
sit-ins and
economic boycotts that became a landmark event in the
U.S. civil-rights movement. In
1993, an eight-foot section of the lunch counter was moved to the
Smithsonian Institution.
Non-American retail users of the Woolworth name
Woolworths Group plc originally was the British unit of F.W. Woolworths, but has operated independently as a separate company since 1982.
Woolworths Limited is the largest retail corporation in Australia, operating a variety of supermarket and other retail chains in Australia and Woolworths Supermarkets (New Zealand), and is in no way connected to F.W. Woolworth or the now-defunct U.S. or current U.K. Woolworths banners.
Woolworths is an upmarket retail chain in South Africa selling goods of a comparable nature to Marks & Spencer stores in the United Kingdom.
Woolworth GmbH was the German unit of F.W. Woolworths, but has operated independently since 1998 as a result of the original company's change of focus.
Woolworth Mexicana operates a chain of small variety stores in Mexico as a subsidiary of Groupo Comercial Control, S.A. de C.V. (External Link
)
In popular culture
A sit-in protest took place at the downtown Jackson, Mississippi Woolworth's in 1963.
The Jimmy McHugh-Dorothy Fields song I Can't Give You Anything But Love, Baby the breakout hit of "Blackbirds of 1928", features the lyric 'Diamond bracelets Woolworth doesn't sell, baby'.
"Mungojerrie and Rumpleteazer," a song from Andrew Lloyd Webber's musical Cats, contains the line, " ... or after supper one of the girls suddenly missed her Woolworth pearls ... "
In the Indigo Girls' song Least Complicated, there's repeated reference to a ring. Emily Saliers said in the spoken intro to the song on the CD 1200 Curfews that she bought the ring at Woolworth's.
In 1986, Nanci Griffith included a tribute song to her former home-town (Austin, Texas) Woolworth's store, "Love at the Five and Dime" on the album Last of the True Believers.(External Link)
The X Ray Spex wrote a song called Warrior in Woolworths on the album Germ Free Adolescents, this song was about the lead singer, Poly Styrene, working in the typing pool for the firm.
The 1975 album Nighthawks at the Diner by Tom Waits references jewelry from Woolworth's in the song Eggs and Sausage (In a Cadillac with Susan Michelson). It may also reference the origins of the chain as a five and dime store.
In a graveyard charade, a late shift masquerade
2 for a quarter, dime for a dance
with Woolworth rhinestone diamond
earrings, and a sideway's glance . . .
In the 2000 film O Brother, Where Art Thou?, George Clooney's character, Everett McGill, is thrown out of "the Woolsworth's" after a fist fight with his wife's suitor.
Woolworth's is referenced in the As Friends Rust song "Where The Wild Things Were" with the lyric "It was 1989, Entered the world of crime. Banned from Woolworth's for all time."
A temporary Woolworth's storefront was placed on New Haven, Connecticut's Chapel Street for exterior shots of Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull.Further Information
Get more info on 'F W Woolworth Company'.
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