Origins of F. W. Woolworth Company The F. W. Woolworth Co. had the first
five-and-dime stores, which sold
discounted general merchandise and
fixed price, usually five or ten cents,
undercutting the prices of other local merchants. Woolworth, as the stores popularly became known, was one of the first American retailers to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle and select without the assistance of a
sales clerk. Earlier retailers had kept all merchandise behind a counter and customers presented the clerk with a list of items they wished to buy. After working in Augsbury and Moore
dry goods store in
Watertown, New York, Frank Winfield Woolworth obtained credit from his former boss, William Moore, along with some savings, to buy merchandise and open the "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store" in
Utica, New York, on February 22, 1879. The store failed and closed in May 1879, after Woolworth earned enough money to pay back William Moore. Woolworth soon made a second attempt, and opened his "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store", using the same sign, on June 21, 1879, in
Lancaster, Pennsylvania. Lancaster proved a success, and Woolworth opened a second store in
Harrisburg, Pennsylvania, in 1879, with his brother Charles Sumner Woolworth as manager. The Harrisburg store closed after a falling-out with the landlord; their next store, in
York, Pennsylvania, likewise closed after only three months of operation. Finally, the "5¢ Woolworth Bros. Store" opened in
Scranton, Pennsylvania, on November 6, 1880, with Charles as manager. At this location, the "5¢ & 10¢" merchandising model was fully developed, and the store proved a success. Charles bought out Frank's share of the Scranton store in two installments, in January 1881 and 1882, making him the company's first franchisee. In 1884, Charles partnered with his longtime friend, wholesaler
Fred Morgan Kirby, on a location in
Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, which they called "Woolworth and Kirby". This location, too, was successful, and the brothers continued persuading family members and other associates to join them in forming a "friendly rival syndicate" of five-and-ten-cent stores. Each of the syndicate chain's stores looked similar inside and out, but operated under its founder's name. Frank Woolworth provided much of the merchandise, encouraging the rivals to club together to maximize their
inventory and
purchasing power.
Rise and expansion By 1904, the syndicate had six chains of affiliated stores operating in the United States and Canada, which began incorporating separately during the next few years. In 1912, however, all 596 stores
merged into one corporate entity under the name "F. W. Woolworth Company", which was then incorporated on February 16, 1905. The building was paid for entirely in cash. It was completed in 1913 and was the
tallest building in the world until 1930. It also served as the company's headquarters until the F. W. Woolworth Company's successor, the
Venator Group (now Foot Locker), sold it in 1998. After Frank Woolworth's 1919 death, his brother Charles took on the role of chairman of the board, and the company's treasurer
Hubert T. Parson took over the presidency. In 1925, the company reported $253 million in sales; in 1926, $239 million. For many years the company did a strictly "five-and-ten cent" business, but in the spring of 1932 it added a 20-cent line of merchandise. On November 13, 1935, the company's directors decided to discontinue selling-price limits altogether. The stores eventually incorporated
lunch counters after the success of the counters in the first store in the UK in
Liverpool. These counters 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 the 1960
Greensboro sit-ins, protesting the company's
racial segregation policies in the
South, a key event of the
Civil Rights Movement. The Woolworth's concept was widely imitated, and five-and-ten-cent stores (also known as five-and-dime stores or dimestores) became a 20th-century fixture in American downtowns. They would serve as
anchors for suburban shopping plazas and shopping malls in the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s. Criticisms that 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.
Diversifications In the 1960s, the five-and-dime concept evolved into the larger
discount department store format. In 1962, Woolworth's founded a chain of large, single-floor discount stores called
Woolco. In that same year, Woolworth's competitors opened similar retail chains that sold merchandise at a discount: the
S.S. Kresge Company opened
Kmart,
Dayton's opened
Target, and
Sam Walton opened his first
Wal-Mart store. The following year, in 1963, Woolworth expanded into the shoe store business with the purchase of
Kinney Shoe Corporation, which led to the founding of the sporting goods store Foot Locker in 1974; the company would specialise in sporting goods and exclusively focus on sporting goods by 2001. 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. During the 1980s, the company began expansion into many different specialty store formats, including Afterthoughts (which sold jewelry and other accessories for women), Northern Reflections (which sold cold-weather outerwear),
Decline ,
North Hollywood, Los Angeles in 1977 in the 1980s The growth and expansion of the company contributed to its downfall. The Woolworth company moved away from its
five-and-dime roots and placed less emphasis on its
department store chain as it focused on its specialty stores. Still, the company was unable to compete with other chains that had eroded its
market share. While it was a success in Canada, the
Woolco chain closed in the United States in 1983. Europe's largest F. W. Woolworth store, in
Manchester, England (one of two in the city centre), suffered a fire in May 1979. Despite the store being rebuilt even larger and up to the latest fire codes, the negative stories in the press and loss of lives in the fire sealed its fate; it ultimately closed in 1986. During the rebuilding and partly as a result of the bad press, the British operation was separated from the parent company as Woolworths plc. This proved fortuitous, as the brand subsequently lasted a full twelve years longer in the United Kingdom than it did in the United States. On October 15, 1993, Woolworth's embarked on a
restructuring plan that included closing half of its 800-plus
general merchandise stores in the United States and converting its Canadian stores to a
closeout division named
The Bargain! Shop. Woolco and Woolworth survived in Canada until 1994, when the company sold the majority of the Woolco stores to
Wal-Mart. The Woolco stores that Wal-Mart did not purchase were either converted to
The Bargain! Shop, sold to
Zellers or closed permanently. Approximately 100 Woolworth stores in Canada were rebranded as
The Bargain! Shop, and the remainder closed. Amid the decline of the signature stores, Woolworth began focusing on the sale of athletic goods. On January 30, 1997, the company acquired the
mail order catalog athletic retailer
Eastbay. On March 17, 1997, Wal-Mart replaced Woolworth's as a component of the
Dow Jones Industrial Average. Analysts at the time cited the lower prices of the large
discount stores and the expansion of supermarket
grocery stores – which had begun to stock merchandise also sold by five-and-dime stores – as contributors to Woolworth's decline in the late 20th century. Woolworth's announced that same year it would be closing its remaining department stores in the United States on July 17.
Rebranding and epilogue After the closure of its department stores, F. W. Woolworth Company had changed its corporate name to Venator Group, Inc. on June 12, 1998. The name "Venator" means "sportsman" in Latin. In 1999, Venator moved from the
Woolworth Building in New York City to offices on
34th Street. Then on October 20, 2001, after selling off its non-athletic business (including a number of
Burger King franchises), the company changed names again; taking the name of its top retail performer and became
Foot Locker, Inc., which Woolworth started in 1974 under
Kinney Shoes. Foot Locker, Inc., is the legal continuation of the original Woolworth; it retains Woolworth's pre-1997 stock price history. As part of celebrating F. W. Woolworth's centennial on the
New York Stock Exchange on June 26, 2012, a news release featured a 1912 Woolworth's store and a 2012 Foot Locker store. In 2023, Foot Locker announced plan to close up to 400 low performing stores by 2026. Some of them were once Woolworth's. On May 15, 2025,
Dick's Sporting Goods, a sporting good store and rival to Foot Locker, announced that it would acquire the Foot Locker, Inc. company as well as its brands, including Foot Locker, for $2.4 billion. The acquisition by Dick's would mark the end of the corporate legacy of Woolworth's. == Influence on popular culture ==