Woolies to be resurrected as online-only store Woolworths has been given the kiss of life as an online-only store after Shop Direct bought the now defunct UK High Street retailer’s brand name. Financial terms of the deal were kept secret by the David and Frederick Barclay-owned company, which is Blighty’s biggest home shopping dealer and operates under well-known brands …
What's the point? the brand name is associated with being out of date and a failure of modern retailing. The brand has little to no real value apart from nostalgia. Why not come up with something new that would cost nothing rather than building on the corpse of one of the most public failures of 21st century in the UK.
I heard an interview with someone involved in this venture on Radio 4 this morning. The chap was gamely trying to convince us that it will be the same old Woolies only online. Yes, they're cashing in on the name, that's business, but why all the publicity crap about it being the same as the good old Woolworths? I suppose if they didn't bother trying to publicise it in that way, it would reveal the venture to be what it is, just another cookie-cutter e-tailer. I suppose it's Commodore and Littlewoods all over again.
27,000 jobs lost and Wollies will still live on, how many jobs will be created with it's shift to online only.
Not exactly the death knell for high street retailers but it's still quite scary for that such a large retailer will stil live on and the 27,000 staff are wondering how they will live.
I wonder how much they bought the brand for?
Assuming they paid peanuts for the brand all they have to do is replicate one of their existing websites and add 'Woolies' to the systems the call centres use to service all their brands.
One very cheap extra outlet, trade on the name until it falls into disrepair and then get shot. Quite astute really. Only thing is of course that they just made a shed load of call centre employees redundant, maybe they'll need some back....
It used to be that Woolworths was everywhere, even small market towns. They pulled out of Brigg in the Seventies, and WH Smith the same. But Brigg has more now than it did then. Boots never went away. There's Poundstretcher and Lidl and Wilkinson and Tesco.
The last time I was in Woolworths it was nothing special. Can't eat the sweets, and the DVDs were less expensive than in HMV, but nothing special.
And what is going to be different about an on-line Woolworths?
OK, maybe the name is worth something, but what for?.And how can they sell it?
If the name alone was such a great selling point, why did they fail? I'm still not sure why we're all supposed to be cheering the fact that the name lives on.
If there were no longer any jam doughnuts in the world and I bought the name to describe my new kick-you-in-the-bollocks service, there wouldn't be crowds of people in the street celebrating the fact that I had saved jam doughnuts.
The may be people strewn across the street ruing the day they tried to buy a doughnut, but I'm not sure how that helps anyone.
If you look up Woolworths on a certain user-edited encyclopedia you'll find a long list of companies trading under the name in many countries of the world.
Presumably the majority, but perhaps not all, of these originally had some connection with the original Americanl FW Woolworth but who actually owns the rights to the name now?
I'd agree with the other posters. The name has no cachet now and, as with Littlewoods, the new owners must be hoping to cash in on misplaced nostalgia.
In a shambling zombie sense? "Store of the Dead"?
Or is it more a Frankenstein's Monster / Herbert West affair - a bolt of digital lightning here, a shot of AJAX there?
What I think it most reminds me of is the part in "Hellraiser" where Frank Cotton, the escapee from Hell, has consumed his brother Larry and is wearing his skin.
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