Woolworths could return to UK

[HCal]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68068 ... mf5sMGjX5w

Any thoughts?

[storewanderer]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68068 ... mf5sMGjX5w

Any thoughts?

They better watch out for Dollar General. Dollar General does basically the same thing, with a larger mix, better expertise at consumables/food, and way tighter expense controls.

Just think if the US Woolworths had played its cards differently and not been so stuck to malls, they could have become what Dollar General is today. Whether or not that is a missed opportunity or not is up for debate.

[veteran+]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68068 ... mf5sMGjX5w

Any thoughts?

They better watch out for Dollar General. Dollar General does basically the same thing, with a larger mix, better expertise at consumables/food, and way tighter expense controls.

Just think if the US Woolworths had played its cards differently and not been so stuck to malls, they could have become what Dollar General is today. Whether or not that is a missed opportunity or not is up for debate.

Woolworths (USA) into a Dollar General if they survived?

I highly doubt that....................

[jamcool]

The UK has an equivalent of Dollar Tree called Poundland-best known in YouTube videos as the favorite shopping place of Stuart Ashen aka Ashens.

[storewanderer]

https://www.bbc.com/news/business-68068 ... mf5sMGjX5w

Any thoughts?

They better watch out for Dollar General. Dollar General does basically the same thing, with a larger mix, better expertise at consumables/food, and way tighter expense controls.

Just think if the US Woolworths had played its cards differently and not been so stuck to malls, they could have become what Dollar General is today. Whether or not that is a missed opportunity or not is up for debate.

Woolworths (USA) into a Dollar General if they survived?

I highly doubt that....................

Why not? They are practically the same store... just more food/consumables at Dollar General...

I went to 5 Dollar Generals this week. Only 1 of the 5 was a disaster. I think that hotline to report unsafe conditions is helping. I wish it wouldn't take so long to report an incident, they are slow and ask a lot of questions.

[veteran+]

Yeah.....................not really.

I'm pretty old and nothing about DG resembles Woolworth.

[storewanderer]

Yeah.....................not really.

I'm pretty old and nothing about DG resembles Woolworth.

The merchandise mix is basically the same?

I'd call them both a "variety store."

Woolworth in its time reminded me more of a drugstore without a pharmacy... especially similar to Payless since both had categories like clothes, fabric/crafts, etc. Woolworth also had fish in the pet department.

Not identical. Just similar.

Where I am going is I think Woolworth could have taken its format/mix and done what Dollar General has done opening a bunch of stores in tiny areas with no stores. I don't know anything about how the logistics of US Woolworth worked. I assume they had distribution centers.

[rwsandiego]

Yeah.....................not really.

I'm pretty old and nothing about DG resembles Woolworth.

Like you, I remember Woolworth's. They were not like Dollar General nor were the like drugstores without a pharmacy. Woolworth was more like a scaled-down K-Mart. They also operated Woolco stores that were somewhere between a K-Mart and a Target.

Although Woolworth had stores in malls and shopping center, they had hundreds of stores in urban shopping districts. They also had several multi-level stores in the downtowns of large cities.

One of Woolworth's problems was their aging store base. They were musty and old. It was as if they stopped spending money on existing stores in 1963.

[storewanderer]

Yeah.....................not really.

I'm pretty old and nothing about DG resembles Woolworth.

Like you, I remember Woolworth's. They were not like Dollar General nor were the like drugstores without a pharmacy. Woolworth was more like a scaled-down K-Mart. They also operated Woolco stores that were somewhere between a K-Mart and a Target.

Although Woolworth had stores in malls and shopping center, they had hundreds of stores in urban shopping districts. They also had several multi-level stores in the downtowns of large cities.

Out west in the 80's and 90's the drugstore chains Longs and Payless were exactly that: a scaled down K-Mart type of a store. Osco/Sav-On and Thrifty were not... they handled fewer categories... and more of a focus on consumable food/liquor.

I never saw a Woolworth in the urban shopping districts. I think those were mostly gone by the 90's. The ones I saw out west were either downtown or mall stores. They also had an "express" format which was smaller and in at least a couple of CA malls in the early 90's. It was missing things like clothing.

The Downtown Reno Woolworth flooded and was very damaged in the period right before the entire chain closed (both Reno locations survived until the last of the chain closed). They promptly repaired the store from the flood damage. The store was about to have a grand reopening right as they announced the chain was closing. The store was "modernized" during the renovation with some different categories present, converting the restaurant to a deli/frozen yogurt format, and rearrangement of the store (it had a basement). Decor was still rather sterile but the gray and red walls gave way to lighter colors. The store reopened in liquidation sale on day 1 of reopening.

[buckguy]

Yeah.....................not really.

I'm pretty old and nothing about DG resembles Woolworth.

Like you, I remember Woolworth's. They were not like Dollar General nor were the like drugstores without a pharmacy. Woolworth was more like a scaled-down K-Mart. They also operated Woolco stores that were somewhere between a K-Mart and a Target.

Although Woolworth had stores in malls and shopping center, they had hundreds of stores in urban shopping districts. They also had several multi-level stores in the downtowns of large cities.

One of Woolworth's problems was their aging store base. They were musty and old. It was as if they stopped spending money on existing stores in 1963.

Veteran+ has this right. Woolworth was nothing like DG. Their original model was similar (a 5 cent section and a 10 cent section), but the merchandise was meant to have value. It also originally was durable goods--crockery, toys, household items so you didn't have to worry about anything becoming quickly obsolete because of style, season or perishability. By the 30s they had to broaden the selection and raise the price limit. The other variety chains did that, too. Grant's and Kress started out selling more expensive items(25 cents as the original limit) and Grant's, in particular, got into clothing sooner than other chains.

Woolworth carved out niches in things like stationary and school supplies as well as party goods, and the people who bought this stuff were a broad cross-section of the population. They considered spinning off stationary as a separate retail operation in the 70s. Woolworth never had prescriptions, but did a big health and beauty business and usually were cheaper than chain drug stores for the same items. They had relatively complete year round toy departments when only downtown department stores or specialty toy stores did that. They also had food service in most of their stores. Woolworth had stores in well-off suburbs as well as middling urban neighborhoods and downtowns. They offered a level of customer service that was typical of its time, but not great certainly not bad for a mostly serve service operation.

DG has never been about value-just cheapness and convenience, they don't really have distinctive niches of quality merchandise and they're the last place you'd expect (or want to patronize) a luncheonette.. The only real parallel is that they've built bigger stores over time and had to exceed their original price range. The stores are understaffed and often in neighborhoods that pose a risk to customers and employees alike. The one lesson they might take from Woolworth and its peers is that once you raise the price limit, you compete with more kinds of stores and it's more difficult to stick with lines that don't change over time or need special handing or buying (Woolworths's was smart never to sell food, although they did that in the UK). Woolworth and the the other chains exponentially increased sales but their net earnings as a percent of sales dropped and that just got worse over time.

DG is much more like longgone classes of stores that are rarely discussed or remembered. Place like John's Bargain Stores, a semi-national chain that operated from the 50s to the 70s and sold close-outs and low end goods. They were the kind of place no one wanted to be caught dead (or at least seen) shopping. They were in a mix of low and middle income urban neighborhood as well as sub-par performing shopping centers. There were a bunch of really low end clothing chains like Lynns, which sold "dollar shirts" and "dollar dresses" locating stores off of main shopping streets to get low rents. There were local chains like Silverman's in Cleveland that started out selling army surplus and had a mix of close-out and plain old cheap goods--hardlines with some utilitarian clothing. Morton's in DC was the mostly soft goods equivalent, Baltimore had a chain like this that lasted into the 90s. The closest variety store equivalent would have been the Jupiter stores that Kresge opened in underperforming Kresge stores where they had long leases--these were limited assortment places that sold slow moving, but utilitarian items at low prices. Much to Kresge's surprise, these stores stores did very well and they kept them going until they sold what was left of their variety stores in the 80s.

Woolworths had a store in my old neighborhood in Chicago that was smaller than the shopping center stores but it had the classic lines like school supplies--I bought things for teaching there. It had toys, boxed candy, health and beauty stuff, cheap clothing lines, notions, etc. If you needed a needle and thread or a box of bridge mix, it was the place to go. It was clean and well organized and as a modern store that had replaced one lost in a fire, it didn't have the classic institutional looking paint on the walls--bile green or urine yellow like an old hospital. It was nothing like a DG.