Mexico And South America:
F. W. Woolworth Co., S. A. de CV, Mexico
Thirty years after the first five-and-dimes were established in Cuba, the famed Red-Fronts made their debut in Mexico. In 1954, Woolworth President Robert C. Kirkwood sent ambitious T. L. Crump (who had been in charge of the company’s New York operations) to Tijuana to start the new division. Twelve Hispanic men were chosen to be managers and were quickly whisked over the border to California for training.
In the beginning, many of the products were made in the United States and imported into Mexico for sale. By 1960, however, 97.5 percent of the merchandise sold in the country’s eight stores was being provided by 1400 different Mexican suppliers, which was a considerable boon to these business owners. Of the 650 employees working for F. W. Woolworth Co., S.A. de CV, Mexico, over ninety percent were native Mexicans. Three years later, there were a total of ten stores in place, the most expansive being the Red-Fronts in Tijuana, and in the Lindavista section of Mexico City.
By 1979, there were twenty-four Mexican holdings, and Woolworth’s had also expanded into Spain and opened seven stores there. That year, under the leadership of Martin Merritt, managing director of Mexican and Spanish subsidiary, the company embarked upon a major renovation of store facilities and merchandise. They stocked more lines of sporting goods and novelty items than ever before, hoping to capture the growing market of teenagers with expendable income.
The American-owned holdings of F. W. Woolworth Co., S.A. de CV, Mexico, continued to show modest profits through the 1980s. However, the import policies and sporadic unrest in both Mexico and Spain proved draining. The Spanish division was finally sold off in the 1980’s. The details of the Mexican holdings are vague, but it appears that in 1997, F. W. Woolworth Co. sold its remaining twenty-seven Red-Fronts to Control Dinamico, S.A. de CV.
F. W. Woolworth’s “Down Under”: The Australian Market
The Venator Group currently maintains a strong retail presence in Australia. More than twenty years ago, the F. W. Woolworth Co. started testing out a variety of shoe stores there, including Kinney, Susie’s Casuals, and Williams. Business in Australia proved to be immensely profitable, and today, the Venator Group owns or controls interest in hundreds of specialty establishments “Down Under,” including its profitable Footlocker stores.
However, the largest retail chain in all of Australia is Woolworth Limited. While I was writing Remembering Woolworth’s, several of my friends who had traveled to Australia brought me back mementos and photographs of the Woolworth’s stores there. They had presumed, as many people do, that the Australian Woolworth Limited was one and the same with our American company, especially given the the familiar red letters of the Woolworth Limited logo. The fact is that there is no direct proprietary connection between the two Woolworth’s chains, but a little digging uncovered a strong historical connection.
Back in the 1920s, when the founders of Woolworth Limited were just starting out in the variety store business, they purposely capitalized on the success of their wildly popular overseas counterpart. The company’s prospectus originally read “Wallworths Bazaar Ltd.” but the founders soon decided that this name was too cumbersome and blatantly opted for plain “Woolworth.” (Reportedly, this came about only after it was verified that American Woolworth’s had no immediate plans to open Red-Fronts in Australia.) The founders then went a step further, and copied the style of the American mastheads, including the use of the color red in its logo and the design of the store’s counter displays. American Woolworth’s was not quick enough on the draw when it came to trademarking the Woolworth name, and so Woolworth Limited of Australia continued on unhindered. Another historical connection can be found in the Australian’s overwhelming response to bargain-priced merchandise, especially in the fledgling days of Woolworth Limited. The first ad (and handbills) which appeared in 1924 for “Woolworth’s Stupendous Bargain Basement” in Sydney, boasted:
TIME CAPSULE MEMORY
“The Cuban Tencent in the 1940s and 1950s”
In my hometown of Cienfuegos, the Tencent was situated in La calle San Fernando (San Fernando Street). In the 1940s and ’50s, I remember that, at night, a group of young men would hang out in front of the store to wait for their girlfriends. The store was in the middle of the block, had two entrances, three big show windows and the peculiar sign of Woolworth’s. Inside, it had cubicles to show off the merchandise, and women inside the cubicles, dressed very neat, gave the service to the public. The store was always clean and you had not to ask for prices because everything was marked. During the time when the yo-yo was popular, the Tencent had a weekend show on the street with a professional man that played the yo-yo and taught different tricks to the people. The Tencent’s yo-yo was the best on the market then!
Later on, I lived in Habana, where the main Tencent was on the corner of Galiano & San Rafael Streets. That corner was known as “La Esquina del Pecado” (The Sin’s Corner) because the men used that central corner to make love dates. That corner was crowded all the time, with people and traffic. The Tencent had access from three different streets, and there was a wide “portal” (porch) running from the beginning up to the end of the street, on both sides, giving shade from the sun and protection from the rain.
The store was always clean and neat, it was air-conditioned and excessive with illuminations. A large cafeteria served all kinds of sandwiches, food, soda, ice cream, pizza (my favorite) and pie a la moda. The store opened at 8 a.m., closed at noon, open again at 2 p.m. and closed 6 p.m.—six days a week. Only the cafeteria stayed opened during the lunchtime 12–2 pm. Most of the lights on the store were off in that period. Across the street from the Tencent was the high class store “El Encanto,” famous all around the world. “El Encanto” was destroyed by a sabotage fire after Revolution sometime in the 1960s. In that site, a park was built. I left Cuba in 1967 and went to Spain. I came to USA in 1968. It was long ago but I still remember the Tencent.
—Miguel A De Dios, N.J.
“A handy place where good things are CHEAP Really CHEAP. The CHEAPEST possible. Come and see. You’ll want to live at Woolworths! From 9 in the morning till 9 at night. Woolworth’s will sell what you want and sell it CHEAP.”
This huge Woolworth Ltd. “Metro” store in Sydney, 1998, often causes confusion among North American tourists, who often presume it is related to the former American stores of the same name. There is no connection, but the founders of Woolworth Ltd. purposely took on the familiar American “Woolworth” name back in the 1920s to boost sales. The Venator Group (formerly the Woolworth Co.) does, however, operate hundreds of specialty and shoe stores in Australia, including Footlocker.
People responded so enthusiastically to this ad that the opening turned into a cause celebre. The next day, the papers reported that, “a wild rush of bargain hunters converged on the premises and met in violent collision, many fainting as a consequence, and the staff lunch room was converted to an emergency casualty station!” The scene was strongly reminiscent of Frank Woolworth’s wild Red-Front debuts in Washington, D.C., New York City, and Liverpool.
Woolworth Limited of today bears no resemblance to the fledgling company of the old days. It has been transformed from a small variety store to a super store, more along the lines of an American Cosco or Wal-Mart. And so, even without the direct connection, the Woolworth name lives on in Australia, and the Venator Group’s hundreds of shoe and specialty store holdings there reinforces the modern-day retail connection between the United States and Australia.
The Mystery Of Woolworth’s In Cyprus
Along with Woolworth Limited of Australia, the popular F. W. Woolworth & Co. of Cyprus also generates retail confusion.
North American visitors to the beautiful Island of Cyprus are often pleasantly surprised to see the “Woolworth’s” name on red mastheads in that country, again, often presuming that these stores are directly affiliated with the American chain. In this particular case, th
ere is a thread of a legal connection, because by virtue of an agreement, F. W. Woolworth & Co (Cyprus) Ltd. has retained the use of the internationally-known name “Woolworth”—but that is where the connection ends. F. W. Woolworth & Co (Cyprus) Ltd. opened its first store as a purely Cypriot company in Nicosia in April 1974, and was acquired by the N. K. Shacolas Group in 1985. Today, it is the largest retail sales organization in Cyprus, operating six large, modern department stores.
The Many Faces Of Woolworth’s International
The meaning of “Woolworth’s International,” dating from the 1890s to the present day, clearly encompasses a broad perspective. Along with its traditional Red-Fronts, the F. W. Woolworth Co. expanded globally with specialty chains like Kinney, Champs, and the San Francisco Music Box Co.
It is also important to note that Woolco, the company’s mass-merchandise, discount department store chain, also played an important role in increasing the company’s international scope. F. W. Woolworth Co. debuted its first Woolco in Columbus, Ohio, in 1962, and later that same year, the first Woolco opened up in Windsor, Ontario, Canada. Within a short time, there were over 100 Woolcos, and 10 Woolco catalogue stores operating in Canada. Woolco was popular in England as well; thirteen Woolco stores were operating in the United Kingdom by 1979.
The Woolco subsidiary became so prominent, both in North America and abroad, that in 1975, the Woolco and Woolworth’s stores were consolidated to form one large General Merchandise Division, with W. Robert Harris elected as its first president. Even after the Woolco stores in the United States closed down (in 1982), Woolcos in other parts of the world remained open for years afterward.
Beautiful, upscale Woolworth’s store on the Island of Cyprus, 1998.
The company’s Red-Fronts and specialty stores located in island resorts also fared exceedingly well. Until the end in 1997, Red-Fronts in the Virgin Islands, the Caribbean and Puerto Rico enjoyed a steady trade of tourists and locals. The U.S. Virgin Islands and Puerto Rico also hosted Kinney Shoe stores, another former subsidiary.
With the exception of Canada and the British Isles, a good deal of the company’s global expansion occurred after the passing of Frank Woolworth in 1919. But the seeds for all of the company’s international ventures were planted during his lifetime. Frank had the courage, and foresight, to take risks in unfamiliar, uncharted territories, and because of this, he beat hundreds of his competitors to the punch. During an interview for this book, one former Woolworth executive quipped that if Frank Woolworth had been alive to witness our first Americans landing on the moon, he would have quickly set in motion plans to expand his Red-Fronts to the solar system, venturing “where no retailer had gone before.”
Chapter Seven
Transition: From History to Nostalgia
“Frank Woolworth won a fortune, not by showing how little could be sold for so much but how much could be sold for little.”
—New York Sun, April 1919
The Passing of the Chief
During the years 1916 to 1919, Frank Winfield Woolworth vacillated between periods of great pride and deep despair. The pride set in each and every time he saw yet another F. W. Woolworth Co. masthead open in a major American city, or on the day he witnessed the completion of his “skyscraper” in Watertown’s public square, where it had all began in 1873. When despair took precedence, Frank would immerse himself in more building. He made sweeping enhancements to his already stunning Woolworth Building in New York. He commissioned his own grandiose mausoleum at Woodlawn Cemetery and dedicated a new Woolworth Memorial Methodist Episcopal Church of Champion, New York, in memory of his parents. Meanwhile, over on “Millionaire’s Row,” he remodeled his estate at 990 Fifth Avenue to include an expansive marble entrance hall and a gothic-styled library.
Of all the building projects of his twilight years, his most ambitious was that of erecting the second “Winfield Hall” in Glen Cove, Long Island. The original Winfield was reduced to cinders in November 1916, the result of faulty wiring. Within weeks, Frank commissioned Cass Gilbert to design another, this one to be more lavish than its predecessor. Amazingly, the structure was completed within twelve months. It was here, in a fifty-six-room Italian Renaissance fantasy-land set on eighteen acres amidst Long Island’s famed “Gold Coast,” that the chief spent his declining years.
The music chamber of Winfield Hall was by far Frank’s favorite place, a haven designed with perfect acoustics and a multitude of gadgets. With a flick of a switch, the room would darken, and the slow, light sounds of a symphony would be heard. As the music raised in pitch and tempo, brilliant white lights would ignite, accentuated with amber, blue, and mauve. As the compositions changed, life-sized portrait of the appropriate composer, be it Beethoven or Bach, would sweep into view. Frank would lead his guests into the music chamber and proudly watch their reactions as the music room came to life. At other times, he would sit in there alone, crying his eyes out, wishing he could turn back the hands of time.
Woolworth immersed himself in all this building almost as though he was determined to fabricate a protective armor of marble, stone, and music, an armor that could shield him from his own mortality. Of course it could not. His health continued to weaken as decades of lavish fatty dinners, fine wines, expensive cigars, and long work hours finally took their toll. He had the tallest building in the world and he had a palace as fine as Napoleon’s, but Frank Winfield Woolworth had lost his emotional foundation.
It is probable that the passing of his closest colleagues and family members contributed to Frank’s own relatively early demise. By the summer of 1915, he’d already buried Carson C. Peck and Seymour H. Knox. In January 1916, his general manager, C. C. Griswold died, and on May 7 of that same year he lost William Moore. The most crushing blow of all was the death of his middle daughter, Edna Woolworth Hutton.
Edna was only thirty-five-years old, of gentle but moody temperament, and gifted with a concert-caliber voice. Yet, not even her vast inheritance, her life of pure luxury, or the smiles of her daughter, Barbara, could spare Edna from the continual pain she suffered as a result of husband’s philandering. Frank Woolworth had warned his daughter about Franklyn H. Hutton, but Edna had been too starry-eyed to heed her father’s counsel. It was not for lack of ambition that Frank Woolworth detested his son-in-law—of this Franklyn Hutton (and his brother E. F. Hutton) had plenty. Both male Huttons were successful in the brokerage business and both had chosen their wives shrewdly. Edward F. Hutton had wed Marjorie Post, inheritor of the Post cereal fortune, and Franklyn had snared one of richest heiresses in the world in Edna Woolworth. The trouble was, that Franklyn Hutton also had insatiable appetites for liquor, gambling, and women. It was the latter that Edna’s romantic heart could not bear.
The end came in Edna’s suite in the Plaza Hotel in New York City, May 2, 1918. Reportedly, Edna had discovered a letter confirming that Franklyn had another steady mistress, regardless of his promises to turn over a new leaf. In response, Edna took an overdose of poison and died, dressed in her favorite white lace dress. Tragically, it was her own five-year-old daughter, Barbara Hutton, who found her mother in this state. In the weeks ahead, the newspapers reported that Edna Woolworth Hutton had died from mastoiditis (an ear aliment) but those closest to her knew better. Amidst his grief, Frank had the sense of mind to pay off various officials to hush up the truth. Little Barbara was bundled up and brought back to her grandfather’s estate in Long Island, until the family could decide what to do with her. If all of this tragedy wasn’t enough, Frank’s granddaughter, Gladys Helena McCann, also died that year. As Frank grew increasingly tortured by his losses, his wife Jennie didn’t even notice the surrounding turmoil. By then she was so senile that she enjoyed only fleeting moments of awareness, and Frank and his surviving daughters, Helena and Jessy, were forced to have their mother declared legally incompetent.
Back at the executive offices of the F. W. Woolworth Company, things were progressing at a rapid pace, in spite of the
challenges of World War I. With Carson Peck gone, and Frank suffering increasing physical and emotional instability, Hubert Parson had been chosen to fill the void.
Parson, who’d started out with the company as a teenager, was recognized as a business and mathematical wizard, but he was not well liked personally. Fortunately for Parson, he had the chief’s undaunted loyalty (Woolworth always thought of Parson as the son he never had), a fact which eased some of the potential tensions among Parson’s colleagues. Under Parson’s leadership as vice president, beginning in 1915, the company continued to grow. Sales for 1917 increased to $98 million, and that same year, a reported 900 million people passed through the doors of the Red-Fronts. In 1918, the company reached the “1,000th store mark” with the opening of its large dimestore on fashionable Fifth Avenue and Fortieth Street in New York, across from the New York Public Library. Parson’s business acumen certainly pleased Frank Woolworth, and allowed the chief to rest easier when he could not personally attend to important business matters.
However, Parson’s private life did cause Frank a fair amount of unneeded stress. Parson had been visibly trying to outdo his mentor for years. After Woolworth bought a large mansion on Millionaires Row, so did Parson—instructing the famous decorator, Helwig Schier, to make sure Parson’s home at 1071 Fifth Avenue was even more elaborate than the chief’s over at Number 990. If Woolworth bought a brand new automobile, then Parson would, too—complete with uniformed chauffeur. At first these antics amused Frank Woolworth, but as Parson’s dreams of grandeur began to cloud his judgment, the situation changed.
Remembering Woolworth’s Page 17
