Regular readers will know that until January this year I worked for Woolworths — I wrote about my experiences. Since then I have taken an interest in the future direction of the brand, which was sold last month to Shop Direct.

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.)

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.

Today, the shutter came down for the final time at Woolworths Kirkcaldy, Store 1201. It was among the final group of branches to close. It is the end of an era. This institution had been a fixture in Britain’s High Streets for almost 100 years.

The history of the original company set up by Frank W. Woolworth goes back even further though. Even though some of the online campaigns to save Woolies laboured under the impression that it was a British store, Mr Woolworth was in fact from the USA and he opened several stores in the USA and Canada before opening a single British branch. And right up until the 1980s, Woolies in the UK sent most of its (substantial) profits back to the USA as well!

According to the Woolworths Virtual Museum website (which was taken down when the company went into administration, but can still be viewed on the internet archive), the origins of the store can be traced right back to 1873. Frank Woolworth worked for William Moore at the Augsbury and Moore Dry Goods Store in Watertown, New York. Mr. Moore came up with the innovation to sell surplus goods at a fixed price of 5 cents.

Mr. Woolworth took this idea further, deciding to set up an entire shop full of goods that cost 5 cents. Having persuaded Mr. Moore to back the store, the first Woolworths shop opened in Utica, New York in 1978. But after an initial success, the store was eventually a flop. Undeterred, Mr. Woolworth opened a second store in Pennsylvania, 60 miles away. It was a runaway success.

From then on, there was no stopping Woolworth. By 1910, F. W. Woolworth paid for the construction of the Woolworth Building — which was the world’s tallest building until 1930 — with $15 million in cash. As well as expanding into the UK, Woolworths also opened branches in Canada, Germany, Ireland and Cuba! (Retailers named Woolworths in Australia, New Zealand, South Africa and Mexico have nothing to do with F. W. Woolworth’s company.)

It was only in 1909, over 30 years after the opening of the first Woolworth store in the USA, that the brand arrived in Britain. Anglophile Frank W. Woolworth had written several years earlier during a visit to the UK, “I believe that a good penny and sixpence store, run by a live Yankee, would be a sensation here.” The first British F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd 3^d and 6^d store was opened on 5 November 1909 on Church Street in Liverpool. It was a roaring success.

Before long, Woolworths had become bigger in the UK than it was in the USA. It was quickly given the nickname Woolies, a sign of the genuine affection the British public had for the store. By the 1920s, a new Woolworths store was being opened every 17 days. Local officials across the country were desperate for a Woolies to open in their town, and if it did so it was seen as a seal of approval for the area. The British image of the chain was further underlined when the company raised enough money to buy two Spitfires during World War II.

Woolworths dropped the fixed price concept during World War II. The 6^d upper limit had been stretched to breaking point during the 1930s as Woolies started selling socks and shoes individually for sixpence. And if you wanted a saucepan, you had to buy the lid separately too! As rationing came in, the 6^d upper limit had to go.

After the war, Woolies grew even more quickly than before. Alongside the programme re-opening stores affected by the events of World War II, 330 new stores were opened within a six year period in the 1950s. At one point, stores were opening at the rate of two per week. The 1,000th Woolworths store in Britain was opened in Portslade in 1956.

Decline set in during the 1970s. Analysts began to criticise the “moribund” store. Throughout that decade, around 150 stores were closed, bringing the number of stores back down from a peak of 1,100.

Woolworths had lots of freehold properties and sold some in order to buy DIY chains B&Q and Dodge City. Analysts were sceptical, but Woolworths Chairman Geoffrey Rogers was right in his hunch that DIY would be a growth area in the coming decade. Mr. Rogers had envisaged 100 B&Q stores opening within ten years. The target was easily surpassed.

Woolworths had much to celebrate after its first seventy years. But that was all plain sailing compared to what would face the company from the 1980s onwards. My next post will look at the history of Woolworths from the Kingfisher purchase onwards.