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Woolworths

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Company Information - 12th March 2009

F W Woolworth Company (known as Woolworths or Woolies) was originally started as a retailer in America. It was one of the ‘five & dime’ stores where everything was sold a t a fixed price of five or ten cents.

It was one of the first stores to openly display its goods so that the public could handle and select them.

Woolworths Group Plc was originally the UK arm of F W Woolworth Company although they have operated independently since 1982.

In 1982 the British arm was bought by Paternoster, later to become Kingfisher. Shortly after Kingfisher bought Woolworths it sold their Oxford Street store to realise the value of the real estate and embarked on a spree of store closures and real estate disposals.

Having closed all their out of town stores (Woolco) Kingfisher embarked on the creation of BigW. Thus it sought to unite all of its British Brands- Woolworth, B&Q, Comet and Superdrug- under one umbrella.

Unfortunately, for various reasons, this concept was not wholly successful and in 1999 Kingfisher planned to merge with Asda. As we know, instead, Asda was bought by Walmart (of America). In 2000 Kingfisher decided to demerge its “general merchandise” stores to concentrate on D.I.Y. (B & Q).

Woolworths Group Plc was thus formed in Sept 2001 but not before Kingfisher had sold all the Woolworths buildings, meaning that the new business had to lease them back at enormous cost. In spite of Woolworths producing huge takings they were eaten up by these huge rents.

The Woolworth stores faced dramatic declines in sales due to competition from supermarkets and internet stores culminating in a loss of £72.5m in the six months to August 2008.

The company was put into Administration in November 2008 with debts of £385m. The Woolworths name has been bought by the Barclay brothers together with the childrenswear label, Ladybird.