The stores eventually incorporated lunch counters and served as general gathering places, a precursor to the modern shopping mall food court. A Woolworth’s lunch counter in Greensboro, North Carolina became the setting for a significant event during the civil rights movement (see below).
The Woolworth’s concept was widely copied, and five-and-ten-cent stores (also known as five-and-dime stores) were a fixture in American downtowns through the 1960s, and became anchors for suburban strip malls by the mid 1970s. The criticisms that the five-and-dime stores drove local merchants out of business would repeat themselves in the early 21st century, when big box discount stores became popular. However, many five and dime stores were locally owned or franchised, as are dollar stores today.
In the 1960s, the five-and-dime concept evolved into the larger discount store. In 1962, Woolworths founded a discount chain called “Woolco”. This was the same year as its competitors opened similar “discount” chains: the S.S. Kresge Co. opened Kmart; Dayton Company opened Target; and Sam Walton opened his first Wal-Mart.
By Woolworth’s 100th anniversary in 1979, it had become the largest department store chain in the world, according to the Guinness Book of World Records. The Company began to open a number of other retail chains, most notably Kinney Shoe, Northern Reflections apparel shops and Best Of Times, a watch and clock chain, and Foot Locker.
However, the Woolworth department store chain had moved away from its five-and-dime roots, eventually focusing on its speciality stores. It was unable to compete with other chains that had usurped its market share. While successful in Canada, the Woolco chain closed in the United States in 1983. Woolco survived in Canada until 1994, when the majority of the stores there were sold to Wal-Mart. The locations that were not purchased by Wal-Mart were converted to discount stores called “The Bargain Shop”. On July 17, 1997, Woolworths closed its remaining department stores in the US and changed its corporate name to Venator.
Analysts at the time cited the lower prices of the big discount stores and the expansion of grocery stores to carry most of the items five-and-ten-cent stores carried as factors in the stores' lack of success in the late 20th century. In that same year Wal-Mart replaced Woolworth on the Dow Jones Industrial Average.
Transition to Foot Locker, Inc.
In 1999, Venator moved out of the Woolworth building to offices on 34th Street. On October 20, 2001, the company changed names again; this time, it took the name of its top retail performer and became Foot Locker, Inc., with specialization in athletic clothing and footwear.
Boycott
On February 1, 1960, four African-American students sat down at a segregated lunch counter in a Greensboro, North Carolina Woolworth's store. They were refused service, touching off six months of sit-ins and economic boycotts that were a landmark of the US civil rights movement. In 1993, the lunch counter was donated to the Smithsonian Institution. The location of that Woolworth's is now scheduled to become a Civil Rights Museum (although several setbacks have delayed its opening).
Note that this segregation was due to local laws and customs of the time, not company policy of F.W. Woolworth's. Woolworth's lunch counters in the North were never segregated.
International users of the Woolworths name
Woolworths Group plc was the British unit of Woolworths, but has been separate since 1982.
Woolworths Limited is the largest retail corporation in Australia, operating a variety of supermarket and other retail chains, yet in no way connected to the original Woolworths banner.
Woolworths is an upmarket retail chain in South Africa selling goods of a comparable quality to the Marks & Spencer stores in the UK.
Woolworth GmbH was the German unit of Woolworths, but has been separate since 1998 as a result of the original firm's change in focus.
See also
External links