The Wonder which was Woolies

Woolworths is due to close some 99 years after the first UK store opened on 5th November 1909 in Liverpool. For many years the slogan invited you to experience the “Wonder of Woolies”. Growing up in Dublin the large Woolworth’s store on Henry Street was a wonderland with a huge retail area and a display far slicker than its Irish rivals. It was also the shop where you could find everything with a far wider range than any other Irish retailer and for a kid it had the biggest and best range of toys. It also had the best store cafeteria in Dublin, a gleaming example of modernity compared to its home grown rivals. For many it was the benchmark in retailing and with its structured training programme (when such things were uncommon) it is where many in the retail industry learnt their trade.

However Woolies, under Kingfisher and its asset stripping management, pulled out of Ireland destroying their flagship store by subdividing it for development. However it has been trading elsewhere on its laurels for years with a lack of identity and the whole shop became a “Pick & Mix” of strange products few of which it was competing on effectively as more nimble retailers and the supermarkets eat into its market share. Shoppers who flocked there for the “50% Closing Down” sale have been disappointed as the “up to” in small letters on the poster meant popular lines such CDs were only reduced 10% and many of these were not mainstream as in “No name sings Perry Como! Ironically, its closing down offers produced the best sales figures in its 95-year history. The chain took a record £27million on the first day of the sale.

In Ireland there was a further twist to the Woolworths tale. Just as Dunnes Stores copied Marks & Spencer with its "St. Bernard" brand imitating "St. Michael" in Northern Ireland there was a copy cat operation with the same "look and feel" called "Wellworths" a name they were able to keep despite several legal actions by Woolworths. Indeed they thrived with 16 stores and were bought over by Tesco 3 years ago.

Sir Geoff Mulcahy, the chairman of the British Retail Consortium and the man who ran Woolworths for two decades, has attacked the retailer's administrator for allowing the group to fail. Sir Geoff branded as "disgraceful" Deloitte's decision to close down all 807 of Woolworths' stores with the likely loss of 27,000 jobs. He said the chain could have been saved.

Deloitte said yesterday that all the stores will close by January 5, barring an unlikely last minute intervention from a buyer. The administrator is in talks with other retailers to sell the stores individually, but the Woolworths name is all but guaranteed to disappear from Britain's high streets in 18 days' time. Sir Geoff, who bought Woolworths in 1982 and demerged the chain from his Kingfisher conglomerate in 2001, said: "The whole thing is disgraceful – there are a lot of losers in the situation. The whole administrative process needs to be looked at as there are two businesses here that could have been made profitable."


Woolworths, Grafton St. Dublin

The second business is Entertainment UK (EUK), Woolworths' distribution division that is also in administration. Deloitte is still talking to possible buyers. Some retail historians will see Sir Geoff's comments as surprising. One of the last things that Kingfisher did prior to demerging Woolworths in 2001 was to sell 182 of the chain's freeholds, saddling the retailer with rents. Some observers claim that this move sowed the seeds for the chain's long-term demise.

Woolworths' stores will close between December 27 and January 5 in tranches of 200 for logistic reasons. Staff have been told and will be paid until the end of the year. Deloitte has put the Pension Protection Fund, the Government's pension’s lifeboat, on alert about the closures. It has also set up a specialist team in Edinburgh to deal with redundancy claims. More than 500 former suppliers to Woolworths and EUK have made claims for money to Deloitte.



Going into the sale in my local Woolies I was there mostly out of curiosity because recently I have only bought bits and pieces there. It has been a cruel year for retail with names like Rosebys, MFI, Ethel Austin, Mark One and now Woolworths disappearing. And the predictions are that there will be many more casualties in the New Year proving the truth of what Warren Buffet said “When the tide goes out you know who has been swimming naked!” It was hard not to be amused by the remnants of corporate hubris; The security stickers saying “We are protecting our product to protect the price” and the new slogan “Woolworth – Well Worth it.” Well no buyer thought so. But even in its last days there was evidence of how bad a retail proposition Woolworths has become. From many examples I could pick I’ll stick with one. It had the James Bond DVDs priced at £12.00 less 10% which is £10.80 each. Elsewhere in the centre HMV, which is not closing down, had them priced a £5.00! I left without buying anything, for me there was no longer any Wonder at Woolies.