In one of my articles, I wrote about the poster that appeared in the staff area this time last year. It announced:

Remember Remember the 5th of November!

In just less than a year, on the 5th November 2009, we celebrate our 100th birthday!

Watch out for more details coming soon…

Unfortunately we didn’t get many more details about the centenary celebrations. All we heard after that was stuff about trying to sell the company for a pound.

I regret not taking the poster to keep as soon as it was clear that Woolies would not emerge from the mire it found itself in through late November and December. Someone is selling one of these posters on eBay at the moment. The poster is a great piece of history — the 100th birthday that never was.

Or was it? Today, the new owners of the Woolworths brand have been celebrating the centenary nonetheless by putting on 100 promotions and giving away free Pic ‘n’ Mix with every order. That is what I like about the new Woolworths, owned by Shop Direct. Despite being a separate company, they are respectful of the name’s heritage. In fairness, they would be mad not to — the Woolies name must still have appeal, especially among those in a nostalgic mood.

Not everyone is so happy about it. The Woolworths Facebook page is often full of offended comments from people who feel that it is presumptuous and opportunistic of Shop Direct to cash in on the 99 years of Woolworths that preceded their involvement. There were, after all, around 30,000 workers made redundant at the original Woolworths last Christmas. Most probably aren’t in the mood to celebrate.

It is a matter of debate whether Woolworths is 100 really. Today is nothing other than the 100th anniversary of the first F. W. Woolworth store to open in the UK. The company had already been operating in the USA and Canada for decades before that. The UK company became separate in the 1980s when it was bought by Kingfisher. After that, Woolworths in the UK became a separate company when Kingfisher cast it off in 2001.

In the USA, the Woolworths name ceased to exist in 1997. But the original company still exists as Foot Locker, having decided to concentrate on sports goods. If the operation in the USA still counts, Woolworths is 131 years old.

You can still shop in bona fide Woolworths stores in Germany. These, like the British stores, were originally part of the American company and became separate in 1998. It declared insolvency this year, but struggles on.

(Supermarket chains named Woolworths in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa have nothing to do with the original FW Woolworth apart from the name.)

The new, online-only version of Woolworths is not set to launch until this summer. However, it has already established a strong online presence, effectively utilising social media tools. What strikes me about this activity is that I cannot imagine the old Woolworths doing this — certainly not with as much success.

For the time being, woolworths.co.uk redirects to The Woolies Blog. This new blog is largely used to ask readers what they’d like to see from the new Woolworths, and keeps people updated on all their future plans. A common theme seems to be how the new online-only store is going to make pic n mix work, and I’m certainly interested to see how they crack that one.

There are also a good deal of nostalgic reflections on the old version of Woolworths. The sidebar contains links to classic Woolworths adverts (though disappointingly all but one of them are from 2006 or later). Readers have been asked what items from their Woolies memories they would bring back. The blog also covered the story of the last ever bag of pic n mix which sold for £14,500 on eBay.

Generally there is just a warm and fuzzy feeling to the Woolworths blog. You can see this most in the description of their team. All the teams even have their own cute little icon to represent them. Clearly a lot of thought has gone into little things like this.

It probably signposts the way the Woolworths brand will be developed by its new owners. A year ago Woolworths was stale and perhaps even tacky. Over Christmas the brand was tarnished. Today Woolies already feels more personable and friendly.

Woolworths now also has a Twitter stream, and they are doing a really good job with it. It is done with a good sense of humour. I do hope they get that kettle and fire extinguisher for their portacabin.

They are also using Twitter to ask followers about the five things from the past of Woolworths that they’d like to see back, with the hashtag #woolies5. (I’m working on my top five, but I’m struggling to get beyond the payslip.)

There has also been a hint that there will be an e-museum. I liked the online museum that was part of the old Woolworths website. I doubt that Shop Direct will have access to all of the old material, but I do look forward to seeing how they will recognise the heritage of the brand, which they clearly have a lot of respect for.

I can’t imagine the old Woolworths being able to embrace Twitter and blogging and getting it the way Shop Direct have. The only sign of a sense of humour in the old Woolworths was some cheesy dialogue between Wooly and Worth.

All-in-all, Shop Direct’s approach to relaunching Woolworths is a great demonstration of how a business can use social media to build a relationship with its customers and to refine its offering. Their Twitter stream is an example that corporate use of Twitter doesn’t have to be annoying. It goes some way to disproving this website.

(Hat tip to Chris Applegate via whom I discovered the Woolworths Twitter stream.)

(Almost) 100 years of Woolworths

A series of posts

1. Woolworths: The curiously British US-based company
2. Woolworths as it was known and loved, and neglected
3. Woolworths: Childhood memories and adult gripes
4. It wasn’t just the credit crunch
5. The blunder of Woolworths
6. Identity crisis
7. The beginning of the end
8. The nasty side of human nature
9. Woolworths: Final thoughts and wrapping up
10. Woolworths rises from the ashes

I was happy to hear on the radio this morning that the Woolworths name has been bought. I had begun to fear that the brand had been damaged too much by the events since November, but it seems as though Woolworths will still live on in some form.

The buyers are the Barclay Brothers, and will operate Woolworths as an online-only venture as part of the Shop Direct Group. It’s ironic that the new Woolworths will focus solely on the website since under the old management the website was one of the weakest parts of the retail arm in my view. But given the success of online-only Littlewoods under Shop Direct, it seems as though they know what they’re doing.

What’s interesting is that Shop Direct have also bought the Ladybird brand. The Ladybird logo is almost as prominent as the Woolworths logo on Shop Direct’s website. It’s a shame they missed out on buying Chad Valley, which was bought last month by Home Retail Group, the owners of Argos. I wonder if the WorthIt! range will return on the new website. I think that WorthIt! electrical goods, for instance, would go down a storm on the new website.

The fact that the new Woolworths will be selling Ladybird clothing appears to be the only thing they know so far. People are being invited to let them know what they liked and disliked about Woolworths to shape the new online store. But during an interview on the Today programme this morning, Shop Direct’s Chief Executive Mark Newton-Jones said that he doubted the new Woolies would be selling washing up bowls or light bulbs.

You can be sure that the new Woolies will also not be selling one of the items that it was most famous for. It would be difficult to offer pic ‘n’ mix in an online environment, but it was clear from much of the media coverage over the past couple of months that Woolies was known first and foremost for its pic ‘n’ mix. That is a real loss to the essence of Woolies.

It won’t be the same, but it is nice to see that the Woolworths name at least will be celebrating 100 years in Britain, albeit not all on Britain’s High Streets.

Thanks to those who thought of me when they heard the story and emailed me!

(Almost) 100 years of Woolworths

A series of posts

1. Woolworths: The curiously British US-based company
2. Woolworths as it was known and loved, and neglected
3. Woolworths: Childhood memories and adult gripes
4. It wasn’t just the credit crunch
5. The blunder of Woolworths
6. Identity crisis
7. The beginning of the end
8. The nasty side of human nature
9. Woolworths: Final thoughts and wrapping up
10. Woolworths rises from the ashes

I have felt very sad about the demise of Woolworths ever since the business began to unravel in front of my eyes around two months ago. I was not sad so much because of my job — I was planning on leaving after the Christmas period anyway. I was just sad to see Woolies go because I was genuinely fond of it as a shop.

I always quite liked the idea that I worked for Woolworths, which had been one of my favourite shops as a child. Kids loved Woolies. I heard a story from another store about a child who enquired to his mother, “Is this Woolies branch closing as well?” When she said they were all closing, the child burst into tears. When I was on the tills during the closing down sale, I heard another child say, “Don’t give us any change!”

My personal affection for Woolies is more surprising because there wasn’t even a branch in Kirkcaldy when I was growing up. There had been a branch at the east end of the High Street, but it had gone by the time I could have any memories of it. It was one of the branches that were sold off in the 1980s.

Today the building houses the Kirkcaldy Indoor Market. But is still very recognisable as a Woolworths, with that classic design of the entranceway that was used for so many Woolworths branches up and down the land.

In the 1990s, there was a small Entertainment-only branch of Woolworths in Kirkcaldy that was more or less in the centre of the High Street. But it closed long before I was old enough to have an interest in buying music, and I have no memory of being in the store at all. That unit has since been an Our Price, a Ponden Mill and latterly a bicycle shop which I think has now closed down.

No, my memories of Woolies came from nearby Glenrothes. I have relatives in Glenrothes, and we would frequently visit, often popping into Woolworths on the way back. When I was a child there was something magical about Woolworths. Maybe it was all the pic ‘n’ mix sweets that I was seldom allowed to buy. I still remember the quaint stickers that used to adorn the pic ‘n’ mix stands — “Please buy before you try” and messages like that.

I always used to wonder why Kirkcaldy didn’t have a Woolies store. It made Glenrothes seem like such a superior town. When I had my job interview at Woolworths, I was asked what I liked most about Woolworths. My answer spoke about how I thought Glenrothes was a better town than Kirkcaldy because it had a Woolies. It must have sounded like I was taking the piss, but it was true.

Woolies finally arrived back in Kirkcaldy in 1998, and it was a large store at that. It filled part of a huge unit that Tesco had recently vacated, having just bought Wm Low whose Kirkcaldy store was judged to be in a better location. From then on, Woolies was always a trusty destination particularly when I had to buy gifts. It is no surprise that Woolworths made most of its profits at Christmas, because in Kirkcaldy at least it was more or less the only place you could find a decent selection of chocolates.

Woolies was also unquestionably useful for other odds and ends. The problem was, you couldn’t always quite tell what odds and ends you would find there. Quite soon after I started working there I clocked that customers were frequently unsure about what Woolies actually sold. I was as well. Even after working there for two and a half years, I would still sometimes be stumped by a question a customer asked about the products we sold, and I would have to go on a wild goose chase to find out if we stocked it.

The store’s role as an events retailer also meant that the range would radically change throughout the year as a matter of routine. Cleverly, shelf space was reserved for seasonal goods. The cycle went from home stuff in January, to gardening in the spring, to back to school in summer, to Hallowe’en stuff in September and October, onto Christmas stuff from then onwards. Tough luck if you wanted to buy a bird feeder during winter though.

Woolworths made a name for itself as a place where you could buy bits and bobs. If you wanted to buy something but weren’t sure where to get it, you could pop into Woolies. This meant that people had an affection for Woolworths — it was that useful shop where you could get your bits and pieces.

But it was also deeply dangerous territory for a store to occupy. Customers would sometimes pin all their hopes on being able to find an obscure household object in Woolies — and would become angry if we didn’t sell it. Then, as widespread access to the internet became a reality, you no longer had to search for your obscure items in Woolies. You could just search Google for them instead.

Meanwhile, all too often people wouldn’t know what Woolworths actually did sell. I primarily worked on the stationery department, but before I worked at Woolies I doubt I would have been able to tell you that it sold stationery. I certainly wouldn’t have bought my stationery from there before I started working there. I shopped at Stationery Box or WH Smith for my ringbingers and refill pads instead.

The sheer variety of goods sold by Woolworths also meant that it had multiple rivals on the High Street, each of whom focussed on a niche that they could specialise in. HMV sold a better range of entertainment products. You could go to Dunelm Mill for your household goods. Around half a dozen phone shops surrounded our back door. There were at least two greetings cards shops a stone’s throw away. The Works had some art and craft stuff. Even for toys you could go to Argos. Apparently Wilkinson destroyed Woolies down south. And of course, Woolworths competed with the major supermarkets on almost everything.

It seemed as though Woolworths needed to bring a better focus to its product range. But at the same time, it was difficult to see which departments could be safely ditched. DIY-type stuff could have been a prime candidate, but at the same time there was nowhere else on the high street (certainly on Kirkcaldy High Street) where you could buy that sort of thing. Entertainment could have gone due to poor sales, but it propped up an important arm of the Woolworths business, Entertainment UK.

I thought it would have been a good idea for Woolworths to position itself as a shop for kids and their parents. That would have brought most Woolworths departments — confectionery, kids clothing, toys, even home goods — under a clearer focus. In a way, I think Woolies had already become that store, but it didn’t have the bravery to properly market itself as such.

It is too easy, though, to blame Woolworths’s demise on the eclecticism of its range. Analysts may have bemoaned the way Woolies stocked Monopoly boards under the same roof as screwdrivers. But that doesn’t explain why one of the healthiest stores on the High Street just now is Poundland, which is like a jumble sale in comparison to Woolies. Plus, the thesis is fundamentally incompatible with the never-ending rise of the supermarket.

My next and final post in the series will look at some of the blunders of Woolworths and what life as a Woolies employee was like in the final few months.