The Closing of Woolworths

Hands up who is surprised?!

My only fond memories of Woolworths seem to be back when I was knee height to a grasshopper and bugging my mother to get me some of their Pick and Mix. Since then, I can honestly say Woolworths had become one of those shops you hoped one day would have a good deal, but never really materialized.

The little known fact is, Woolworths was founded by an American, a Mr. Frank Woolworth who came to England after tracing his ancestry back to a little town near Stoke On Trent.

The other little known fact was that Entertainment UK, the most recent owners of Woolworths are one of the UK’s biggest CD, DVD and games suppliers, so when this crisis hit, stores such as Zavvi were left with a very low supply of stock.

Today, Woolworths are launching their closing down clearance sales (I will pop in to see if any bargains are to be had), after losing out in the marketplace to stores like Wilkinson and suffering huge losses in revenue from the digitization of music (their biggest money spinner was selling physical copies of music), it’s sad to see such a big name disappearing from the high street.