Frank Winfield Woolworth

Frank Winfield Woolworth
Born	(1852-04-13)April 13, 1852 Rodman, New York
Died	April 8, 1919(1919-04-08) (aged 66) Glen Cove, New York
Resting place	Woodlawn Cemetery
Residence	Winfield Hall
Education	Watertown Commercial College
Known for	Founded F. W. Woolworth Company (now Foot Locker)
Net worth	USD ~ $76.5 million
Political party	Republican
Spouse(s)	Jennie Creighton (m. 1876)
Children	Helena Maud Woolworth McCann Edna Woolworth Hutton Jessie May Woolworth Donahue
Parent(s)	John Hubbell Woolworth Fanny McBrier
Relatives	Charles S. Woolworth (brother) Barbara Hutton (granddaughter) Seymour H. Knox I (cousin)

Frank Winfield Woolworth (April 13, 1852 – April 8, 1919) also known as Frank W. Woolworth or F.W. Woolworth was an American entrepreneur and the founder of F. W. Woolworth Company and the operator of variety stores known as "Five-and-Dimes" (5- and 10-cent stores) or dimestores, which featured a low-priced selection of merchandise. He pioneered the now-common practices of buying merchandise directly from manufacturers and fixing the selling prices on items, rather than haggling. He was also the first to use self-service display cases, so customers could examine what they wanted to buy without the help of a sales clerk.^[1]

Biography

Frank Woolworth was born in Rodman, New York, to John Hubbell Woolworth (1821–1907) and Fanny Woolworth (née McBrier; 1832–1878), and had a brother, entrepreneur Charles Sumner Woolworth (1856–1947).^[1][2] His parents, John and Fanny Woolworth, were devout Methodists and sympathetic to the Northern side during the Civil War - they raised their two sons, Frank Winfield and Charles Sumner, accordingly.^[3]

Education

At the age of four, Woolworth told his parents that one day he would become one of the peddlers that sometimes came calling; he and Charles would play "store"; Frank would set up merchandise to be sold to his brother.^[4] As was common at the time, Woolworth finished his schooling at the age of sixteen, yet with only basic knowledge and no experience he was unfit to begin working in any legitimate store. Undeterred, he applied to many shops in the area, every time receiving a resounding “No."^[5] Woolworth attended a business college for two terms in Watertown, New York, after having received a loan from his mother.

Career

In 1873, Woolworth worked as a stock boy in a general store called Augsbury & Moore's Drygoods in Watertown.^[6] His first experiences at Augsbury & Moore’s would serve as the starting point to his own business venture and innovations. Woolworth was by all accounts an inept salesman.^[7] He was instead given jobs such as washing the windows, where he found a creative niche in arranging the store’s front display. His work was so impressive that his boss, after his first attempt, assigned Woolworth that role from thereafter.^[3] Woolworth learned the difficulty with the typical business practice, in which few items were labeled with price tickets and a clerk was responsible for obtaining an item for the customer and making the transaction.^[8] It was from these early experiences that Woolworth developed the notion that goods should sell themselves, something which became increasingly prominent in his retail career.

Frank and Charles Woolworth with Seymour H. Knox I

Under the employ of Moore & Smith, Woolworth jumped at the opportunity to sell a large surplus of goods and organized a store in Great Bend that opened on February 10, 1878; sales were disappointing. To make matters worse, five days later, his mother, Fanny, died. Either to repress his grief or now inspired, Frank threw himself into his work but to no avail, as the Great Bend store failed in May. Frank would always remember his mother’s words, “Don’t worry son, I just know one day you’ll be a rich man." It was after his mother’s death that Woolworth’s trademark concept of the 5-and-10 Cent store, or the “Five-and-Dime,” was developed.^[9]

Accounts on the conception of the five-and-dime differ. Scholar Gail Fenske suggests that Woolworth had heard of a “five-cent counter craze” while questioning his own sales ability at his first job.^[7] Jean Maddern Pitrone suggests the idea was conceived after a travelling salesman told Woolworth of stores with the five-cent counter concept in Michigan.^[10] Plunkett-Powell suggests the concept was overheard by Woolworth during a discussion between William Moore and a young man who had opened his own cut-rate goods store.^[11] Regardless of how it was brought about, it is clear that this concept would become the most profound key to Woolworth’s success and would change not only his life, but retailing as well.

Woolworth memorialized in an architectural detail of the Woolworth Building

Woolworth borrowed $300 and opened a five-cent store in Utica, New York, on February 22, 1878. It failed within weeks. Woolworth opened his second store in April 1879, in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, where he expanded the concept to include merchandise priced at ten cents.

In 1911, the F.W. Woolworth Company was incorporated with 586 stores. In 1913, Woolworth built the Woolworth Building in New York City at a cost of $13.5 million in cash. At the time, it was the tallest building in the world, measuring 792 feet, or 241.4 meters.^[12]

Woolworth often made unannounced visits to his stores, where he would shoplift items to test the staff's attentiveness. Managers or clerks who caught him doing so were sometimes rewarded with promotions.^[13]

Personal life

On June 11, 1876, Woolworth married Jennie Creighton (1853–1924). Together, they had three daughters:

• Helena Maud Woolworth McCann (1878–1938)
• Jessie May Woolworth Donahue (1886–1971), mother of James Paul Donahue, Jr..
• Edna Woolworth (1883–1917), who committed suicide. She was the mother of Barbara Hutton.^[14]

Woolworth's granddaughter Barbara Hutton would gain much publicity for her lifestyle, squandering more than $50 million. Hutton likely named her London, UK, mansion after her grandfather's Long Island estate.

Long Island estate

Woolworth built Winfield Hall in Glen Cove, New York, on Long Island, in 1916.^[15] In 1978, the Woolworth Estate became the home of Monica Randall, a writer and photographer. She wrote a memoir of her experiences there entitled Winfield: Living in the Shadow of the Woolworths. Other notable residents of Winfield were the Reynolds family of R. J. Reynolds Tobacco Company and Reynolds Aluminum. The mansion was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.^[16]

Death

Woolworth's tomb in Woodlawn Cemetery, Bronx

Woolworth died on April 8, 1919, five days before his 67th birthday. At the time of his death, Woolworth was worth approximately $76.5 million or the equivalent of 1/1214th of the US GNP.^[17] His company owned more than 1,000 stores in the United States and other countries and was a $65 million ($804,328,215 in 2009 dollars) corporation. He died without signing his newest will, so his mentally handicapped wife received the entire estate under the provision of his older 1889 will.^[18][19]

Woolworth is interred in the Woodlawn Cemetery in The Bronx, New York City.

Legacy

• Bronze busts honoring Woolworth and seven other industry magnates stand outside between the Chicago River and the Merchandise Mart in downtown Chicago, Illinois.
• Woolworth was inducted into the Junior Achievement (US) Business Hall of Fame in 1995.^[20]
• A cemetery east of Watertown, New York, where he started his first store, is named for him.^[21]

Woolworth Company legacy

In the 1960s, after Woolworth's death, the company began expanding into various individual specialty store concepts, including sportswear, which led to the development of the Foot Locker sporting goods store in 1974. For a while there was a chain of discount stores called Woolco. By 1997, the original chain he founded had been reduced to 400 stores, and other divisions of the company began to be more profitable than the original chain. The original chain went out of business on July 17, 1997, as the firm changed its name, initially to Venator, but in 2001 adopted its sporting goods brand, Foot Locker, Inc. In 2012, they celebrated Woolworth's 100th anniversary on the New York Stock Exchange. The UK stores (under separate ownership since 1982) continued operating under the Woolworth name after the US operation ceased, and by the 2000s traded as Woolworths Group. The final UK stores ceased trading January 6, 2009. The UK Woolworths brand was bought by Shop Direct Group in the UK who plan to run the store online only. Woolworth stores continue to operate in Germany. Although both the Australian company Woolworths Limited and the South African company Woolworths Holdings Limited took their names from Woolworth's US and UK stores, they have no connection to the F.W. Woolworth Company.

See also

• List of Woolworth buildings
• Mr Selfridge (Episode 8)

References

External links

• Pictures of F. W. Woolworth's Long Island Mansion 'Winfield Hall'
• A virtual tour of downtown Hamilton - F. W. Woolworth Co. Ltd.
• Woolworth Museum