By the time I started working for Woolworths, the company was pushing its in-store ordering system big time. In Summer 2006 The Big Red Book was launched to encourage customers to make use of the ordering facility. As sales assistants, we were always encouraged to offer to order any items that weren’t in stock.

Unfortunately, the ordering system was, in my view, a customer satisfaction minefield. The system was slow, clunky and difficult to use. Worse still, the majority of times I checked for an item, it wasn’t in stock and it wasn’t available to order (latterly, it was actually a surprise if an item was in stock). Customers would often raise an eyebrow and say, “I thought you were ordering it because it wasn’t in stock.” No such logic in the Woolworths system. And the flat £4.95 charge for home delivery simply wasn’t worth it for smaller items.

The catalogue also raised customers’ expectations about what they could find in store. A customer would browse the catalogue at home, and expect to be able to find every item they wanted in store. Not so, of course — that’s why they produced a catalogue in the first place. But there were a lot of disappointed customers.

During my stint at Cumbernauld there was a problem soon after the price of pic ‘n’ mix increased. It was still being advertised in the catalogue at the lower price, and the customer demanded to be charged the lower price. I know of at least one other similar incident with another product. The company seemed to forget that producing the catalogue meant they couldn’t really increase any prices.

The Big Red Book experiment was an inept attempt to beat Argos at its own game that was doomed to fail. I have heard that the experiment was ultimately an expensive disaster, and that the ordering system was one cause of the stock availability problems. The catalogue was scrapped in late 2008 (but not before the company had already produced not one but two Christmas 2008 catalogues), but the damage had already been done.

The whole adventure is ironic given that Woolworths was an early player in the catalogue store format with its Shoppers World chain. Woolies gave up on it in the 1980s. Maybe if they persevered they would never have had to worry about Argos.

Smarty-pants analysts like to point out that retailers need things like catalogues and high online sales to survive. But where is Poundland’s online ordering system? I notice also that I can’t buy my food shopping on the Aldi and Lidl websites. Yet these three stores are all in rude health, and are expanding as though the credit crunch never happened. That’s because they focus on providing goods that customers want at low prices — not producing costly catalogues.

It’s highly notable that those currently well-performing stores are all value retailers. Once upon a time, Woolworths would have been seen as a value retailer. Somehow it took its eye off the ball. Woolies was neither a place where you would be sure to find value-for-money bargains, nor a place to buy high-quality goods. Instead, it uncomfortably took a path in the middle — a retailing no man’s land.

In fairness, the launch of the WorthIt! brand was a good stab at offering value-for-money products, and the value was indeed often impressively good. Unfortunately, this sometimes seemed to be at the expense of the main range of products.

For instance, you could always find a better range of stationery in WH Smith (even if it was more expensive there). But alarmingly, the range at Woolworths seemed to get worse since I started working there. Of course, some products had to go to make shelf space for the WorthIt! range. This meant that I could buy sets of WorthIt! notepads that were undoubtedly excellent value for money, but they weren’t quite as good as my preferred kind of mini notepads that disappeared from existence.

Meanwhile, can you believe that latterly we did not sell such basic stationery equipment as a tape dispenser? I only realised this because a customer asked me if we stocked them. I instinctively said yes (of course we do!) only to lose the spring in my step once I had led my customer to the stationery area, realising that I had not seen one in yonks. Boy, did I feel like an idiot.

There were few signs that the product range was going to improve from 2009 onwards. Among the last new products that arrived was a dummy CCTV camera. This must have been designed to be put on sale after the Christmas period, the tell-tale sign being that they came in with half price stickers plastered all over them when they were not yet half price.

Unfortunately, at full price these plastic pieces of crap that literally did nothing (the only feature of this plastic, fake CCTV camera, was a blinking LED) sold for well north of £20. Customers did not touch them with a bargepole, even when the store-wide discount sat at 90% off on the final day.

There they are on the bottom-right of the above photograph along with a million and one WorthIt! laundry hooks. These were among our unsold products after the shutter went down for the final time on Tuesday. In fairness to the laundry hooks, they probably sold fairly well. The only reason we had loads left was because the distribution centre sent us way too many. By that time, crisis mode was well under way, and clearly the distribution centres’ only aim was to get rid of all the stock, just chucking stuff on cages and waving goodbye.

Another of the final new products to arrive was a set of four crocus vases with crocus bulbs. Not a bad product in and of itself. The problem was that the packaging was shockingly bad. There was next to no protection for the individual vases, meaning that they rattled around inside the box, clattering against each other. This sometimes damaged not only the vases but the bulbs as well (which just sat loose on the top of the vases). If a box was dropped, it was curtains.

Worse still, the boxes came with a huge display window. Not so unusual, except for the fact that it wasn’t so much a window as a massive hole in the box. Unprotected by any kind of cellophane covering, it didn’t take too much jiggling for a vase to “accidentally” fall out of the box. A shoplifter would have had a field day with these, simply being able to inconspicuously reach in, grab a vase and pocket it.

The packaging was so poor that the whole lot ended up being scanned off the books. We took the surviving vases out and sold them separately, sans crocus bulbs, for 30p each. But what a load of money that must have gone down the drain, and all for some thoughtlessly bad packaging!

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.

In 1982, the British arm of Woolworths was separated from the American parent when it was bought by retail consortium Paternoster, later to become Kingfisher. It changed the direction of the company forever. According to the Woolworths Virtual Museum, BBC News reported on Woolworths being under British ownership for the first time against a backdrop of the Oxford Street store. Mere weeks later, that very store was closed down.

The Oxford Street store had never been profitable and the new owners sold it to take advantage of the fact that it was a very valuable piece of real estate. This set the scene for a swathe of store closures throughout the decade as Kingfisher sought to capitalise on Woolworths’ portfolio of valuable freehold properties.

When Kingfisher bought Woolworths in 1982, there were 955 stores in the UK. By the end of 1985, there were just 745. Every Woolco out of town store was closed. All 45 Shoppers World (an Argos-style catalogue shop) stores were closed. All of the overseas stores (Woolworths also owned stores in the Republic of Ireland, the West Indies, Cyprus and Zimbabwe) were closed.

What remained of Woolworths was experimented upon. A variety of different shop formats were trialled. One was Kidstore, focusing on goods aimed at children. Another store was bizarrely named Woolworths Weekend (worst marketing ever — why shop there during the week?), while another was The Woolworth Mall.

However, the Kingfisher years undoubtedly shaped Woolies into what we knew it as today. The pic ‘n’ mix offering was turned up to 11. Meanwhile, as well as streamlining the number of shops, Kingfisher streamlined the range of products into more or less the sort of range Woolworths was stocking up to 2008. Believe it or not, the intention was to prevent Woolies from becoming a “jack of all trades” so that it could focus on products that it particularly specialised in.

Meanwhile, experimentation with store formats continued. In the 1990s, Woolworths sought to re-enter towns it had recently left. As a cheap way of doing so, it set up stores in small units that focussed on a particular range. There was a Kids-at-Woolworths which focussed on Ladybird goods, an Entertainment-only shop and a newsagent-style Gifts & Sweets shop.

Subsequently, Kingfisher again appeared to neglect Woolworths. The Woolworths Virtual Museum bitterly notes, “Poor old Woolies, the goose that laid the golden egg for Kingfisher, was left aging in the corner throughout the 1990s – literally an asset to the Group.” This period of neglect is perhaps the root of the problems that eventually spelled the end for Woolworths.

In its day, Woolworth was an innovative store. The “five and dime” concept is one that lives on today in the form of pound shops. Arguably, one of the nails was driven into the company’s coffin by a shop using the Woolworths-invented single-price concept — Poundland (one of the few shops on the High Street that is in good shape at the moment).

Frank W. Woolworth also benefited from his strategy of stocking mass-produced, imported goods which helped drive down prices. Woolworth was also one of the first shops where customers were able to handle and select their goods without having to ask a sales assistant. (The move to self-service, however, was painfully slow, and was not fully completed until decimalisation forced Woolworths to purchase new till equipment anyway. Perhaps that was an early sign that Woolworths had become complacent and set in its ways.)

Woolworths was also, believe it or not, among the first stores to move out of town. In the 1960s it set up the Woolco out of town stores, based on an idea that originated in the USA’s side of the company. However, sceptical local authorities often refused planning permission, fearing that the move to out of town would facilitate the death of the High Street. Woolworths didn’t press on, which is why you didn’t actually see many out of town Woolworths stores.

Having closed all of the branches of Woolco down when it bought Woolworths, Kingfisher set about creating a new out of town store. Seeking to unite all of its British brands — Woolworths, B&Q, Comet and Superdrug — under one umbrella, it created Big W. It didn’t last long. The Woolworths Virtual Museum stingingly blasted:

The Big W format was the most successful prototype store ever launched by Kingfisher. But that has to be taken against a backdrop that their most successful brands – Woolworths, Comet, Superdrug, B&Q, Castorama and Darty were all created by someone else before being absorbed into Kingfisher. Big W was a first – born out of a need to justify Kingfisher’s identity.

Having failed to justify its identity, in 1999 Kingfisher pinned its hopes on a merger with Asda. Everything looked promising until Wal*mart came in and spoiled the party. In 2000, it was decided that the “general merchandise” sector of Kingfisher (comprised of Woolworths, Superdrug and MVC) would be demerged. Today, Kingfisher specialises in DIY rather than being made up of the eclectic jumble of retailers it consisted of in the 1990s.

Woolworths Group plc was formed in September 2001 — but not before Kingfisher had sold all of the Woolworths buildings, meaning that the new business had to lease all of them back from the new landlords. The saddest thing of all is that Woolworths still had huge takings — but it had ginormous rent bills.

The final words on the Woolworths Virtual Museum are rather incongruous.

With a new team at the top, and big ideas for the future, the Group is embarking on the next stage of their history. We look forward to reporting their success here in the Virtual Museum.

The final Woolworths stores in America closed in 1997. Remnants of the company live on though. The UK arm’s joint venture with BBC Worldwide, the DVD publishing house 2 entertain, is still in operation. Meanwhile, the American company still exists as Foot Locker, having decided to focus solely on sportswear in the 1990s.

Believe it or not, the last place in the world you’ll be able to shop in a bona fide Woolworth store is Germany. The company only separated from its American parent in 1997 when it became Foot Locker. But German Woolies appears to still be going strong.