F.W. Woolworth Company
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 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, competition led to a decline beginning in the
1980s. In
1997, F. W. Woolworth Company converted itself into a sporting retailer, closing its remaining retail stores operating under the "Woolworth's"
brand name and renaming itself Venator Group. By 2001, the firm focused exclusively into the sporting goods market, changing its name to the present
Foot Locker Inc (). Chains using the Woolworth name survive in the United Kingdom, Germany, Mexico, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
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Door handle of mid-20th century |
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 local merchants. It was also one of the first stores to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle, select, and purchase. In earlier shops, merchandise was kept behind the 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. That store failed within a year. He opened a second store on
June 21,
1879 in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. This store became a success. Frank Woolworth brought his brother Charles Sumner Woolworth into the business and together they, and others, began to open more stores. The stores were often opened in partnership with other businesspeople. The Woolworths also entered into partnerships with "friendly rivals", who operated independently but co-operated in order to maximize their purchasing power for their inventories.
In
1910, Frank Woolworth commissioned the construction of the
Woolworth Building in
New York City. This building was entirely paid for with cash. The building was completed in
1913 and was the
tallest building in the world until 1930. It 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 the stores together under one corporate entity.
The stores eventually incorporated lunch counters 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. The criticisms that the 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
dollar stores today.
In the
1960s, the five-and-dime concept evolved into the larger discount store. In
1962, Woolworths founded a discount chain called "
Woolco". This was the same year as its competitors opened similar "discount" chains: the S.S. Kresge Co. opened
Kmart; Dayton Company opened
Target; and
Sam Walton opened his first
Wal-Mart.
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. The Company began to open a number of other retail chains, most notably
Kinney Shoe,
Northern Reflections apparel shops and
Best Of Times, a watch and clock chain, and
Foot Locker.
However, the Woolworth department store chain had moved away from its five-and-dime roots, eventually focusing on its speciality stores. It was unable to compete with other chains that had usurped its market share. While successful in Canada, the Woolco chain closed in the United States in
1983. Woolco survived in Canada until
1994, when the majority of the stores there were sold to Wal-Mart. The locations that were not purchased by Wal-Mart were converted to discount stores called "
The Bargain Shop". On
July 17,
1997, Woolworths closed its remaining department stores in the US and changed its corporate name to Venator.
Analysts at the time cited the lower prices of the big discount stores and the expansion of grocery stores to carry most of the items five-and-ten-cent stores carried as factors in the stores' lack of success in the late 20th century. In that same year Wal-Mart replaced Woolworth on the
Dow Jones Industrial Average.
In 1999, Venator moved out of the Woolworth building 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., with specialization in athletic clothing and footwear.
On
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 were a landmark of the
US civil rights movement. In
1993, the lunch counter was donated to the
Smithsonian Institution. The location of that Woolworth's is now scheduled to become a Civil Rights Museum (although several setbacks have delayed its opening).
Note that this segregation was due to local laws and customs of the time, not company policy of F.W. Woolworth's. Woolworth's lunch counters in the North were never segregated.
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A Woolworths store in the UK |
Woolworths Group plc was the
British unit of Woolworths, but has been separate since
1982.
Woolworths Limited is the largest retail corporation in Australia, operating a variety of supermarket and other retail chains, yet in no way connected to the original Woolworths banner.
Woolworths is an upmarket retail chain in South Africa selling goods of a comparable quality to the Marks & Spencer stores in the UK.
Woolworth GmbH was the
German unit of Woolworths, but has been separate since
1998 as a result of the original firm's change in focus.
*
Foot Locker, Inc.*
Woolworth Building*
Greensboro Sit-Ins*
Woolworth's (disambiguation)
*
Woolworths Virtual Museum
