The Rise And Fall Of Woolworths UK Brand
Now that (to my utter shock) Woolworths brand has gone down the panhole in the worst recession this country has seen in decades, I think it only fitting to do a brand eulogy of the mega brand 
In 1873 Franklin Winfield Woolworth, a potato farmers son, started his career in retail as a sales assistant in New York - working without payment for the first three months simply to gain experience and eventually spending 6yrs in employment with the dry goods store that hired him.
By 1879 aged 27, he found a backer to fund his own store opening and over the next 30 years convinced friends and family to open similar operations. In 1909 he merged with those stores and we in the UK saw our first F.W.Woolworths branch in Liverpool.
Frank was so successful that when he constructed the Woolworths New York building, he paid for it in cash and when completed in 1913, it was the tallest building in the world until the Chrysler Building was completed in 1930.
After the launch of the Liverpool store Frank embarked upon a rapid succession of new branch openings across Northern England. By the 1960s Woolworths boasted more than 1,000 stores across the entire UK and was the most prominent retailer on the UK stockmarket by 1963.
The Rot Begins in the 70’s
A re-branding exercise in the 70’s saw Woolworths drop the F.W on both sides of the pond and we were first introduced to the famous ‘W’ motif, however the economic conditions in the 70’s saw a marked decline in the growth of Woolworths stores as a brand from that point onwards.
By 1982 the store was sold to Patenoster Stores, and the new management attempted to define the brand offering by outlining the four key areas; entertainment, home, toy’s and confectionery.
Despite the new image and attempts to define the brand offering, Woolworths continued to suffer a managed decline over the 1990’s.
In 2001 the company was chaired by Gerald Corbett, the former chair of Railtrack; shares which initially floated at 30p rose to 50p the following year.
By this year however, Woolworths share prices plummeted to just 7p.
You can view a brief history of Woolworths in pictures at the Telegraph website >>
Woolworths Decline Over 2008
April 2008
There were 819 stores in the UK
November 2008
The trading shares in Woolworths Group Plc was suspended and with debts of £385m the group entered administration with Deloitte & Touche.
11 December 2008
Woolworths chains commenced clearance sales across all their branches.
17 December 2008
Deloitte & Touche announce that unless a buyer is found for the group all remaining 807 Woolworths stores will close by the 5 January 2009, which will equate to a staggering 27,000 job losses.
There has been much speculation of course as to what has led to the steady downfall of the Woolworths brand since it’s hay days in the 1960s when it had 1,000 stores and growing, and areas where they were failing were cited as:
Competition: Woolies as it has commonly become known, have far too many competitors offering similar low cost products in the form of the many large chain supermarkets and had failed to differentiate itself.
Some marketing experts have suggested that had Woolworths focused less on gaining custom by offering low cost bargain products of poor quality and instead introduced a few higher quality ranges they may not be in receivership today.
I personally don’t feel that this could be a major reason for their demise however because Argos has a similar product offering but deliver the offering in an entirely different way, which takes me to my next point.
Image: Woolworths have suffered criticism about the general appearance of their stores … shabby interiors, cluttered badly arranged shelves, and a general jumble sale type of feel.
Most agree that simply bad management of the group over a very long time has been an issue. I hear that high street brands MFI and Adams may also fall in their wake.
The demise of these large brands of course can represent an amazing opportunity for entrepreneurs - they do say more millionaires are made during a recession that at any other time.
The Woolworths brand is still alive and well in Australia, South Africa, Germany and Mexico.
A Fascinating Aside
On a completely unrelated note, my research led me to an incredibly fascinating recount of the very colourful (and grim) life of Frank’s grand daughter Barbara Hutton - a rather sad read of ‘The Poor Little Rich Girl’, who at one time was one of the richest women in the world >>
UPDATE 15.02.09
Woolworths now have a Woolworths blog implemented by a business contact of mine called Jeremy Dent through his digital marketing company ‘Juice Digital‘.
On the blog you can read about how the UK arm of the brand giant hasn’t quite sunk yet as Woolworths UK now aims to prosper in an online environment instead in the form of an online shop >>
Shortly after their demise on the high street, the Woolworths brand was sold to Liverpool based Shop Direct, which runs Littlewoods and more. Does anyone else find it bizarre that the brand has been bought by a company based in Liverpool, which is where the first Woolworths store was opened in the UK?
The new venture will require just 50 employees, and therefore the 28,000 staff made redundant when Woolworths collapsed will still be left out in the cold.
January 10th, 2009 at 3:43 pm
Woolworth was a key element of my childhood. Looking in wonder around the Wellingborough store was a staple of Saturday mornings while my parents shopped in the nearby market. Sadly, the brand has collapsed. My 22 year old son, when told of the demise of the local Woolies, sniffed, “Even the Pick ‘n’ Mix was poor value”. That says it all!
Charles Cockburn
January 11th, 2009 at 5:02 pm
A rather sad end of a era isn’t it.
Do we think it’s the beginning end of the high street as we know it? Now that online shopping has become so popular?
I’d love to see smaller independent shops start to litter the high street and provide it with something a bit more interesting than the same old same old we’ve been suffering for many years.
January 14th, 2009 at 7:40 am
If I may add another little historical fact to your very well researched piece.
I think I might hold the UK, if not the World Record for a single sale over a Woolworths counter.
It was back in 1969 when they created a new flagship Oxford Street store and for the first time scrapped the wooden floorboards and went for all glass and marble. Way back then they were already investing heavily in attempting to change their image.
I ran a jewellery concession just inside the front doors facing Oxford Street and caused quite a stir when the shop opened its doors for the first time. I’d hired the biggest Securicor van and guards I could find and arrived in the back of it with the reigning Miss England, Miss Scotland and Miss Wales decked out with £25K’s worth of Hatton Garden diamond jewellery (this was before the phrase Political Correctness had been thought of and considered to be OK at the time….).
The ensuing publicity was amazing; TV interviews, one recorded in the store then another one live in the BBC Nationwide studio which was broadcast concurrently with the recording on ITV. We had almost saturation coverage for about fifteen minutes on prime time on a Friday night; BBC2 had only recently started and there were no other channels.
The next day at 9:00am I had a crowd of people wanting to see the Woollies Diamonds. The queue stretched at least 200 metres (yards then, of course) along Oxford Street. Following this, there were approx 600 column inches in the national press and even 6 months later I found myself doing an interview for the New Zealand edition of Women’s Own magazine!
The sales record? I sold a diamond bracelet for £2,500.00 across the counter. I’d be interested to know if anyone has bettered this during the last almost 40 years.
Phil Shepherd
January 14th, 2009 at 4:22 pm
In a few year’s time, we are all going to look back and remark that it’s a shame that there are no bookshops anymore. The high street is slowly becoming eroded, firstly by supermarkets and now the internet. I’m not sure what to think about this, it’s an inevitable change.
Grenville Hamlyn
January 15th, 2009 at 11:17 am
I do wonder what will become of the high street … but will it ever be completely replaced by the Internet?
I don’t think it will because I think that people like to go and look at products before they buy and enjoy the whole experience of being out shopping, so with the right sort of high street you’ll always have people interested in visiting it.
If the high street is going to survive and attract those who like to go out shopping they need to take another look at what they are offering compared to the Internet and realise that they have stiff competition and they need to step it up a notch.
High street brands have become lazy and offer boring products and not a shred of originality. If they want to reclaim the High street and achieve good sales once more they need to improve vastly. Perhaps the collapse of many large brands will make room for some innovators.
February 2nd, 2009 at 3:04 am
that is a very charming post
Added your site to my RSS reader. This has been a great read and a help; especially in the current economic climate.
February 2nd, 2009 at 12:42 pm
Thanks
Another blog you may find interesting in terms of the retail world is my recent post about Outstanding SME Branding - http://www.trulyace.com/blog/design-inspiration/outstanding-sme-branding/
February 15th, 2009 at 4:07 pm
Changes are everywhere and, because Woolworths didn’t adapt fast enough to change, most of their staff suffered a sad fate.
Now they are a niche e-tailer. A warning to us all, perhaps?
February 15th, 2009 at 9:53 pm
Warning or inspiration I wonder? We shall all see in due course what level of success they may achieve I suppose.
For instance, aren’t e-tailers like ASOS cleaning up on the Internet?
Thanks for your comment Jeremy