Remembering Woolworth's: A great man and his five and dime stores

Remember "five and dime" stores? The nickname referred, for a time (until the prices went up, of course), to the price of items in some of the United States' most popular retail outlets.

Most of today's successful discount retailers began life as five and dime stores. The change occurred in a big way in 1962: Kresge's opened its Kmart stores, Sam Walton turned his five and dime into the first Wal-mart, Woolworth's opened Woolco and Dayton Hudson opened Target stores.

The parent stores are mostly gone now. Woolworth died after the failure of its Woolco stores. Grant's died without ever growing into discount stores. They were fun, inexpensive stores to visit. Every department had a knowledgeable, helpful, loyal company employee --- customer service was expected and was delivered with a smile.

Kmart remains, but Kresge's are gone, which is a sad experience for me. I worked for Kmart in the early 1980s, first as a regular employee, then a supervisor and then as an assistant manager (annual transfers to different states: Kentucky, Ohio and Indiana).

When I became an assistant manager, the training was done in Kresge's in Louisville, then at Kresge's in Dayton, Ohio (where the manager duly informed me that the store there, located a half-mile from Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, was a primary first strike site for Soviet nuclear missiles --- help!).

Working in these stores was fun and informative; a great training experience for a young twenty-something. In the early 1980s, it was fun to read the Kresge employee manuals issued in the 1950s which contained such advisements to female employees as "if it's too heavy for you to lift, get a man to do it for you." S. S. Kresge did do some great things, though, in the early 1900s by offering employee benefits such as insurance and vacations to his employees --- the first to do so in the business.

By the 1980s, Kresge stores featured mostly older employees (a joy to work with and learn from, even former employees I met were extremely loyal and loving of the company) and ancient equipment (the less said about the pre-civilization cash registers the better; I once had to carry one of these very bulky and heavy registers up a flight of stairs to the office --- apparently it was too heavy for anyone else to lift). Another favorite experience was climbing on the roof with the manager and two brooms to sweep the snow off so the roof on the Dayton store wouldn't cave in from the snow's weight!

Those experiences, now funny to remember (though that roof was slippery when you pushed the snow off the edge), are why finding the book "Remembering Woolworth's..." after its release in July 2001 is such a treat for me to write about. It brings back those adult memories of working in Kresge's along with happy childhood memories spent as a child visiting Woolworth stores in various states (by the time I was 13, I had lived in eight states due to my father being a chief petty officer in the U. S. Navy with frequent transfers, and every city seemed to have a Woolworth's store).

The Woolworth story begins when Frank Winfield Woolworth, son of a potato farmer, decided farming wasn't for him and just before turning 21 in 1873, he started work as an employee at Augsbury and Moore's Drygoods store in Watertown, New York. The experience wasn't the best in the world for him, according to this book, as Frank soon was called "the worst salesman in the world." Because he was "eager and polite," though, the store's owners took a liking to him and kept him on.

He soon learned his job well and after three months got a raise to $3.50 a week (yes, three dollars and fifty cents a week; reminds me that in 1950 my father enlisted in the Navy to be sent to the Korean War for $75 a month).

For his $3.50 a week (which became $4 a week after six months), Frank worked from 7 a.m. to 9 p.m. every day (except Sundays). During those 14-hour workdays, he dreamed of better things in the future. Meanwhile, he was able to earn enough to repay his mother the $12 she had leant him to attend business school in 1872. By 1875, with $6 a week coming in, he could even afford to buy a high hat to wear to church on Sundays. He even bought a violin that he practiced on in his off-hours (sometime between 9 p.m. and 7 a.m.) which must have been exciting for his neighbors in the apartment building he lived in.

Frank left the drygoods store for Bushnel's, a competitor, when they offered him $10 a week in September 1875. It was not the best move. He had to leave a nice boardinghouse to move into Bushnel's basement --- the owner expected him to sleep on a hard cot in a cold, damp basement. He was given a gun "to keep the burglars away." In essence, Frank was "on the clock" 24 hours a day now for his $10 a week.

His boss was apparently a tyrant and worked him so hard, and with such job stress, that Frank collapsed on the job in February 1876. Frank had gotten engaged and wanted to be married, so he had put up with the job conditions so he could afford to marry the woman he loved.

Frank was taken to his parents' farmhouse and nursed by his mother back to health. In June 1876, he was well enough to marry his beloved Jennie in his parents' living room. They lived with his folks until the Spring of 1877 when he had fully recovered his health. Such was the love of family in those days.

The books says, but doesn't explain how, Frank scraped together $300 as a down payment on a $600, four-acre farm (yes, $600 for four acres, a fortune in those days). He found raising potatos and chickens was a dreary life and didn't produce much income.

His very supportive wife agreed to maintain the home and farm in Great Bend so he could go back to Watertown to work. His pre-Bushnel's bosses had offered him $10 a week to work for them, but the six-day work week meant Frank would be far from home and his wife. One of Jennie's happiest moments during this time was when she was offered a brand new sewing machine in exchange for their flock of chickens.

Eventually, they sublet the farm and bought a home together in Watertown so they could be together. As luck would have it, his store's owners suddenly found themselves in a cash crunch with too much stock on hand.

They asked Frank to open a discount store in Great Bend and unload the overstock. Frank was now a store manager as of February 10, 1878. Five days later, his mother died --- she was just 47 and Frank's life-long ally, what the book calls "the embodiment of unconditional love." It was a great loss for Frank.

Though he worked hard, the store was closed for poor sales just three months later. Frank was now just a salesman back at the Watertown store.

What kept him going were the words his mother had said to him that he never forgot, "Don't worry, son, I just know that one day you'll become a rich man."

His brother, Charles, left the farm to join him at the store. One day, the owners decided to try the unusual idea of setting a 5-cent item counter at the front of the store. The plan was to advertise the 5-cent counter to "lure the customers in". The idea had already been used by other stores in the midwest who found that customers came in to buy the cheap merchandise, but also bought more expensive items while in the store.

Frank put his own ideas into the concept and chose the items to sell. The idea was a huge success. The 5-cent items were a sell-out on day one, and Frank rushed to restock by placing reorders with suppliers.

For Frank Woolworth, this was the birth of the concept he would call his own before long. He reasoned that if a large, upscale store could be so successful with a few items at a cheap price, couldn't a store that sold nothing but inexpensive products be successful as well?

Reluctantly, one of his bosses, William Moore, helped Frank achieve his dream by agreeing to give him a note to help finance a store of his own. Moore thought the idea wouldn't work, but he liked Frank. Frank's father showed his belief in his son by endorsing the note to make good on it if Frank failed.

Others had opened five-cent stores by this time, but Frank began looking for a location that would be home to what he called "Woolworth's Great Five-Cent Store." He found a location in Utica, New York. Years before demographic data was readily available, he personally studied the people and the economy of the town before deciding to build there. It was a successful town full of hard-working union workers who were very cautious with their money --- the perfect place for Frank's concept of an inexpensive store aimed at the less-than-wealthy among us.

At age 27, Frank negotiated a deal with the city's bankers and became a store owner. In a fashion that makes you proud to be an American, this poor man risked everything to leave a steady job, move his family to a new city and face possible failure.

According to the book, Frank got the bank to wait until the end of the month for its $30 a month rent on the location, spent $315.41 for merchandise to stock the store and found himself with $34.59 left. Squeezing every penny from that money he managed to buy wood for counters, cleaning supplies, a cash box and a cheap room at a boarding house.

Of course, affording people to work there was another thing. So this future multi-millionaire scrubbed the place clean all by himself. He did get a small boy to distribute thousands of flyers advertising the February 1879 grand opening (although the boy apparently left hundreds of flyers at each of a handful of stops rather than going door-to-door, according to one of the stories in the book).

Selling things like a 5-cent fire shovel, first day receipts were less than $9. That's one of several versions of what happened, perhaps the most romantic of them, the myth that one hopes was the reality.

Whatever happened, selling five-cent "toy dustpans, biscuit cutters, apple corers, ribbons and cheap necklaces" paid off with $244 in sales the first week. By the end of the first month, Frank had repaid William Moore, his landlords, the bankers and the salary of newly hired employees. He even bought his supporting wife a $45 fur.

Then the economy collapsed. In May 1879, the first Woolworth's closed. Most five-cent stores went belly-up for good. But Frank, who seems like a guy who never got discouraged, said he was "regrouping" and would reopen.

Frank had $30 in his pocket. He would "regroup." He would again open stores. He would have successes and failures.

Relocating to Dutch country in Lancaster, Pa., in 1879, Frank opened a new store. It was successful. He watched the "bottom line" for the limited profits (for instance, selling 144 pieces of red jewelry only produced a profit of $2.20 after merchandise costs are deducted). Forty years later, in 1919, his company was having sales of $107 million dollars for the year.

Woolworth's soon had hundreds of stores in every state in the union and in other countries as well, including England and Germany. The book details the survival of a London store during World War II when the German Air Force was bombing London every day.

Through lists of sales items, to personal memories of former employees, to dozens of images from the firm's history, this book is a marvel that takes you back to those times. The story of a great man is just the beginning. How he built an empire that was beloved by millions of customers, people living the lives he had risen above through hard work and ambition, is thrillingly told.

Included is an 8-page color photos section with pictures of souveniers, post cards, the Woolworth building (opened in 1919 in New York City, it was the world's tallest skyscraper until 1930; a gorgeous photo of the Grand Arcade inside appears in this section) and related items.

Anyone who ever went through a Woolworth's will remember the special events in the dining area of each store: Christmas with Santa, "pick a balloon" to find out your price for a "jumbo banana split" (between 1-cent and 39-cents), the first store to offer year-round turkey dinners on the menu (previously only available Thanksgiving week) and more.

The book details the company's less-than-glamorous history in the south. Its managers were allowed to do things according to local custom, a common if regrettable action, thus leading to some managers banning African-Americans from some sections of the store (such as the seats at the counter in the dining area). It details the famous incident where some black civil rights activists peacefully sat at the counter of a Greensboro, N. C., store and refused to leave.

This eventually led to not only changes in the company, but in the country as the "no coloreds allowed" rules ended nationwide. Part of that counter used in that first "sit in" now sits in the Smithsonian Instituation's National Museum of American History in Washington, D. C., in an exhibit entitled "Sitting For Justice."

Frank Woolworth died in 1919, but the F. W. Woolworth Company went on. In 1962, the Woolco division began as a competitor to Kmart and Wal-mart. These were much larger stores which sold discount merchandise. The Woolco division would falter and die after feeding on operating funds from the Woolworth's division --- all Woolco stores had closed by 1982.

The damage done by Woolco to the company's assets was fatal and is explained in depth in the book. Woolworth's continued on, 1,000 stores (out of a one-time strength of 3,000 stores) still operating by 1990. The company had tried to expand, operating some 7,200 stores under its Specialty Division (places like Kinney Shoes, Lady Footlocker, Northern Exposure, San Francisco Music Company and Champs), but these secondary stores began pulling in more profits than the remaining Woolworth's stores by the 1990s.

The company died slowly. They sold 122 Canadian stores to Wal-mart and reinvested that money in the athletic and footwear divisions. This was called "streamline-sell-acquire" as a strategy --- it worked for some parts of the company, but the remaining Woolworth stores continued to fail, losing $37 million in 1996.

The company's problems stemmed from its once perfect locations. They had been part of small shopping centers and strip malls, but the public was going to "big name competitors, glitzy malls, mail order and cyberspace" to make purchases. The company continued to close or unload its store properties.

By 1997, only a little over 400 Woolworth stores remained in the U. S. (and a few hundred more overseas). It was announced that the stores would be closed and the remaining 9,200 employees terminated (a very small number did relocate to some of the company's other specialty stores).

One of the strange things about that announcement was that many of the calls to Woolworth's corporate headquarters afterward urging the company to keep the stores open were from people worried about what would become of all the fish sold in the Woolworth's store pet departments.

The stores did all close by 1998. The company became the Ventor Group.

The Ventor Group sold the Woolworth Building in 1998. The new owner, a real estate developer, had his workers remove much of the building's Italian Carrera marble highlights as part of a renovation (the Grand Arcade Lobby, a national historic landmark, remains, however). Much of the Woolworth history, including historical assets and personal historical documents of Frank Woolworth, were sold at auction, destroyed or "lost" along the way.

The great irony is that by the year 2000, the name and image of Frank Woolworth, once visible on thousands of store fronts and company stock certificates during the previous 121 years, was no longer displayed anywhere. There's not even a brief mention of him at Ventor's website (although Ventor was formerly Woolworth's).

Despite all this, the book shows clearly that America's love for its memories of Woolworth's won't go away. With few exceptions, these memories are happy ones from my youth and hopefully your's as well.

This is an excellent paperback book with more than 248 pages, with an introduction and an index. It is very well-illustrated with color and in black and white images. It's a healthy, informative look at our shared past as a nation. It is also a loving portrayal of that young fellow, Frank Woolworth, who went from having nothing to being one of retail merchandising's greatest men. In short, a great read.

The author, Karen Pluckett-Powell, also wrote the critically acclaimed "The Nancy Drew Scrapbook: 60 Years Of America's Favorite Teenage Sleuth."

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