Woolworth Company

F. W. Woolworth Company, Woolworth's or Woolworth, or even Woolsworth) was a retail company that was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first Woolworth store was founded in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, with a loan of $300, in 1879 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. The chain went out of business in July 1997, when the company decided to focus on the Foot Locker division and renamed itself Venator Group. By 2001, the company focused exclusively on the sporting goods market, changing its name to the present Foot Locker Inc (NYSE: FL).

Retail chains using the Woolworth name survive in Germany, Austria, Mexico, South Africa and, until the start of 2009, in the United Kingdom. The similarly named Woolworth's supermarkets in Australia and New Zealand are operated by Australia's largest retail company Woolworths Limited, a separate company with no historical links to the F.W. Woolworth Company or Foot Locker, Inc. However, Woolworth's Limited did use the name from the original company, as it had not been registered or trademarked in Australia at the time.

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 (now Foot Locker), in 1998.

By 1924, 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 1924. Fred M. Kirby added 96 stores, Earle Charlton added 35, Charles Sumner Woolworth added 15, and William Moore added two.

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 or dimestores) became a 20th century fixture in American downtowns. They would serve as anchors for suburban strip centers and shopping malls in the 1950s, 1960s and 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.

Diversification

In the 1960s, the five-and-dime concept evolved into the larger discount store format. In 1962, Woolworth's 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's 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.

Decline

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 (primarily smaller locations) were converted to The Bargain! Shop stores, or sold to Zellers.

Focus

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 catalogue athletic retailer Eastbay.

On May 6, 1991, Wal-Mart replaced Woolworths as a component of 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. On July 17, 1997, Woolworths closed its remaining department stores in the U.S. and changed its corporate name to Venator.

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

On February 1, 1960, four black 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 and the store site now contains a civil rights museum, which had its grand opening on Monday, February 1, 2010, the 50th anniversary of the beginning of the sit-ins.

Non-American retail users of the Woolworth name

Woolworths Group plc originally was the British unit of F.W. Woolworths, but operated independently as a separate company from 1982, running stores in the UK, Isle of Man, Jersey and Guernsey. On November 26, 2008 Woolworths Group plc announced that they were in too much debt to maintain their outgoing payments. The remaining British Woolworths stores closed by January 6, 2009, with the loss of almost 30,000 jobs.

Woolworths Limited is the largest retail corporation in Australia, operating a variety of supermarket and other retail chains in Australia and New Zealand. The name Woolworths was legally taken to capitalize on the F.W. Woolworth name since they did not do business in Australia and had not registered the trademark there but is in no other way connected to the U.S. or U.K. Woolworths.

Woolworths is an upmarket retail chain in South Africa selling goods of a comparable nature to Marks & Spencer stores in the United Kingdom. The South African company also operates stores in Bahrain, Botswana, Kenya, Lesotho, Mauritius, Mozambique, Namibia, Nigeria, Oman, Qatar, Swaziland, Tanzania, Uganda, United Arab Emirates, Zambia and Zimbabwe.

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 , sold in December 1997 to Control Dinamico S.A. by Foot Locker Inc  now is a subsidiary of Grupo Comercial Control, S.A. de C.V..

Woolworths operates independently in Bridgetown Barbados, having split from the British branch in 1982. It was established in the 1950s, stocking goods shipped from Britain.

History

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, 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. Woolsworth had a flagship store in Philadelphia.

Presidents

Frank Winfield Woolworth

C.C. Griswald (?-1916)

Hubert Templeton Parson (1919–1932)

Byron D. Miller (1932–1935) 

Charles Deyo (1935–1946)

Alfred Cornwell (1946–1954)

James T. Leftwich (1954–1958)

Robert C. Kirkwood (1958–1965)

Lester A. Burcham (1965–1970)

John S. Roberts (1970–1975)

Edward F. Gibbons (1975–1978)

W. Robert Harris (1978 - ?)

Frederick E. Hennig (1987–1995)

Roger N. Farah (1994 - ?)