Today, the shutter came down for the final time at Woolworths Kirkcaldy, Store 1201. It was among the final group of branches to close. It is the end of an era. This institution had been a fixture in Britain’s High Streets for almost 100 years.
The history of the original company set up by Frank Winfield Woolworth goes back even further though. Even though some of the online campaigns to save Woolies laboured under the impression that it was a British store, Mr Woolworth was in fact from the US and he opened several stores in the US and Canada before opening a single British branch. And right up until the 1980s, Woolies in the UK sent most of its (substantial) profits back to the US as well!
According to the Woolworths Virtual Museum website (which was taken down when the company went into administration, but can still be viewed on the internet archive), the origins of the store can be traced right back to 1873. Frank Woolworth worked for William Moore at the Augsbury and Moore Dry Goods Store in Watertown, New York. Mr Moore came up with the innovation to sell surplus goods at a fixed price of 5 cents.
Mr Woolworth took this idea further, deciding to set up an entire shop full of goods that cost 5 cents. Having persuaded Mr Moore to back the store, the first Woolworths shop opened in Utica, New York in 1878. But after an initial success, the store was eventually a flop. Undeterred, Mr Woolworth opened a second store in Pennsylvania, 60 miles away. It was a runaway success.
From then on, there was no stopping Woolworth. By 1910, F W Woolworth paid for the construction of the Woolworth Building — which was the world’s tallest building until 1930 — with $15 million in cash. As well as expanding into the UK, Woolworths also opened branches in Canada, Germany, Ireland and Cuba! (Retailers named Woolworths in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Mexico have nothing to do with F W Woolworth’s company.)
It was only in 1909, over 30 years after the opening of the first Woolworth store in the US, that the brand arrived in Britain. Anglophile F W Woolworth had written several years earlier during a visit to the UK, “I believe that a good penny and sixpence store, run by a live Yankee, would be a sensation here.” The first British F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd 3d and 6d store was opened on 5 November 1909 on Church Street in Liverpool. It was a roaring success.
Before long, Woolworths had become bigger in the UK than it was in the US. It was quickly given the nickname Woolies, a sign of the genuine affection the British public had for the store. By the 1920s, a new Woolworths store was being opened every 17 days. Local officials across the country were desperate for a Woolies to open in their town, and if it did so it was seen as a seal of approval for the area. The British image of the chain was further underlined when the company raised enough money to buy two Spitfires during World War II.
Woolworths dropped the fixed price concept during the second world war. The 6d upper limit had been stretched to breaking point during the 1930s as Woolies started selling socks and shoes individually for sixpence. And if you wanted a saucepan, you had to buy the lid separately too! As rationing came in, the 6d upper limit had to go.
After the war, Woolies grew even more quickly than before. Alongside the programme re-opening stores affected by the events of the second world war, 330 new stores were opened within a six year period in the 1950s. At one point, stores were opening at the rate of two per week. The 1,000th Woolworths store in Britain was opened in Portslade in 1956.
Decline set in during the 1970s. Analysts began to criticise the “moribund” store. Throughout that decade, around 150 stores were closed, bringing the number of stores back down from a peak of 1,100.
Woolworths had lots of freehold properties and sold some in order to buy DIY chains B&Q and Dodge City. Analysts were sceptical, but Woolworths Chairman Geoffrey Rogers was right in his hunch that DIY would be a growth area in the coming decade. Mr Rogers had envisaged 100 B&Q stores opening within ten years. The target was easily surpassed.
Woolworths had much to celebrate after its first seventy years. But that was all plain sailing compared to what would face the company from the 1980s onwards. My next post will look at the history of Woolworths from the Kingfisher purchase onwards.