Why did Woolworth cease operating?
In 1989, Woolworth purchased Champs Sports, leading to the development of the Woolworth Athletic Group. 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. But 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. On October 15, 1993, Woolworths 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 majority of its stores there were sold to Wal-Mart. Stores that were not purchased by Wal-Mart were converted to The Bargain! Shop stores.
Woolworth’s attempted to move away from the general department store concept and into the realm of multiple specialty stores. The plan was that they could put a couple of specialty stores in a mall and if one of them failed, they could replace it with one of the other types of stores that they owned. Unfortunately, the only stores that they really had any success with were Foot Locker and Champ’s Sports (the later of which they purchased instead of developing themselves.) Due to focusing on the specialty stores and ignoring the department stores, it was easy for Wal-Mart to surpass Woolworth’s as the #1 department store in the U.S. and Wal-Mart actually ended up buying a large portion of Woolworth’s stores. Woolworth’s actually still exists, but they’ve adopted the name of their most popular specialty brand, operating under the name Foot Locker, Inc. They also own the Northern Expressions clothing shops and a timepiece outlet called The Best of Times.
