Woolworths Group

This article is about the British Woolworths Group plc, and its stores. For other retailers of similar name, see Woolworth's.

About

Company logo

Woolworths Group plc is a general merchandise business in the United Kingdom. Its main stores are Woolworths, sometimes known informally as "Woolies".

Woolworths trades predominantly in high street locations. Smaller stores, aimed at meeting everyday shopping requirements can be found in small towns throughout the UK. Larger Woolworths stores can also be found on prime shopping streets in most major regional shopping centres and in out-of-town locations.

Woolworths product ranges are aimed primarily at young mothers and children, though it is sometimes accused by the investment community of lacking a clear niche. It is a fairly downmarket chain, selling both essentials and non-essentials. Key product ranges include toys, confectionery, electronic media, children's clothes, small household and entertainment items.

There are currently 806 Woolworths stores, each with an average of 8,440 square feet of retail space, and 19 Woolworths Out of Town stores trading from an average of 48,350 square feet.

History

A Woolworths store

Woolworths Limited was founded in the United Kingdom in 1909 as a subsidiary of the American company F.W. Woolworth Company. The first store opened in Liverpool.

In 1982 it was acquired by Paternoster Stores Ltd, the forerunner of Kingfisher plc. Woolworths Group plc was formed by the demerger of Kingfisher's general merchandise business, and began trading as a listed company on the London Stock Exchange on August 28, 2001.
During the 1980s, management rationalised merchandise lines into clearly defined categories: entertainment, home, kids (toys and clothing) and confectionery.

In the late 1990s, the management extended the Woolworths brand into other retail formats and alternative channels to accelerate growth by taking advantage of changing retail trends. Some larger format stores were opened under the Big W brand, similar to Wal-Mart in the US. Although initially successful, the format ultimately failed to catch on; the original plan had relied upon leveraging the involvement of other Kingfisher group retailers, but following the demerger this was no longer possible. In 2004, Woolworths sold off some Big W store sites to other retailers, including ASDA and Tesco. The gross internal floor area of the remaining sites was reduced to an optimum trading size of around 40,000 to 50,000 square feet. Following this, they were rebranded as Woolworths Out of Town stores.

Woolworths had previously tried the large out of town store or hypermarket format in the 1980s with the Woolco Stores which were later sold or closed down.

Woolworths, for many years, was a leader in the UK music industry. In the 1950s and well into the 1960s, Woolworths issued recordings available only via their stores on their own label Embassy Records. These releases were double sided singles featuring two cover versions of current hit singles sold at a much cheaper price. This venture was very successful at the time, but was eventually killed off when record labels started to issue compilation albums. However, Woolworths remained in the music business selling a wide range of singles and albums, and remained the UK's Number 1 music retailer well into the 1990s. Even the success of nationwide music specialists stores such as Our Price and HMV couldn't compete with Woolworths during this time. In recent years however, they have suffered from strong competition in this field from the large supermarket chains Tesco and Asda.

In 2000, the Woolworths General Store format was launched.

Joint ventures

E.UK was founded as Record Merchandisers Limited in 1966, and subsequently became a joint venture between a number of record companies. Woolworths became E.UK's largest customer and, in 1986, E.UK was acquired by the Kingfisher Group.

Streets Online was founded in 1996 and has attracted over 450,000 registered customers since its launch. Woolworths Group now owns 91.4 per cent. of Streets Online.

Brands

Chad Valley

Chad Valley Logo

Chad Valley launched in 1991 in response to research that identified a gap in the market for a range of high quality, safe toys that offered good value for money. It was decided to utilise the Chad Valley brand name, which had been in existence since 1860, to create an own label range of merchandise. Chad Valley comprises an extensive range of toys and games suitable for all children from babies and toddlers to boys and girls under 8 years old.

Ladybird

Ladybird is a brand of childrenswear for children aged 0-9 years. Following their acquisition of the brand, it is now sold exclusively at Woolworths. Ladybird is ranked third overall in the childrenswear market, with a 5% market share which continues to grow. There are thousands of lines in the Ladybird range, which is priced competitively from £1.99 - £29.99.

Ladybird Logo

Although Woolworths purchased rights to the exclusive Ladybird brand in 1984 and purchased it outright from Coats Viyella in 2001 the brand has an extensive history. The trading partnership between the original firm Adolf Pasold & Son and Woolworths began in 1934 when the Pasolds family bought the Ladybird brand from Kinger Manufacturing Co in 1938 and it was later bought by Coats Viyella.

Woolworths In Manchester City Centre

Presently the nearest branch of Woolworth's to Manchester City Centre is the former Big W outlet located next to the Manchester Fort retail park. In fact, unlike most major cities in the United Kingdom, there has not been a major Woolworths store in the city centre for over 25 years.

This is because on the 8 May 1979, a massive fire at a Woolworths store located near to Piccadilly Gardens (where the Piccadilly 21 Nightclub is presently located) killed 10 shoppers. An inquiry showed that precautions to prevent the fire was inadequate and that the store had lacked measures (such as an effective sprinkler system) to stop the spread of the fire from the furniture department.

The devastation to the Manchester store and the loss of life, resulted in the Fire Research Station taking out a number of tests to develop a number of sprinkler systems that could handle a large department store fire like the one in the Manchester store. The fire also generated modifications to the Fire Precautions Act, and indirectly made furniture manufacturers develop new fabrics and materials to make sofas from.

However even though Woolworths did not have a major store in Manchester since the fire, in the 1990s the firm did have a couple of small outlets that sold music and confectionery (sweets, pick 'n' mix, chocolate etc). Even though these types of outlets were also trialled at the Sheffield Meadowhall Shopping Mall (which closed in 2003), they did not last very long with the Manchester Music and Video store being superceeded by a larger MVC store, which was owned by the outlet anyway.

Woolworths Group: Encyclopedia BETA

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