 | |
| Type | GmbH |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1927 |
| Headquarters | Unna, North Rhine-Westphalia |
| Parent | Tengelmann Group |
| Website | woolworth.de |
Deutsche Woolworth GmbH & Company OHG is a chain of department stores in Germany and Austria. It was a former subsidiary of the American F. W. Woolworth Company.
It was not part of the closure scheme that affected the British Woolworths Group stores, nor is it related to the Australian-based Woolworths Group retail group.
F. W. Woolworth Co. GmbH was founded in 1927 as a subsidiary of the American company F. W. Woolworth Company. When still part of the parent company, corporate documents refer to the division as Retail Company of Germany, Inc.. The German subsidiary separated from its American parent company in 1998, through a management buyout. In October 2007, the British investment and consulting company Argyll Partners purchased the company.
The first store opened in Bremen. As at 2003 the chain had 340 outlets ranging from 400 to 4000 square metres in size with over 16,000 employees and sales of approximately € 1 billion.
Although its workforce had been trimmed to 11,000, on 14 April 2009, Woolworth GmbH board of directors voted to declare insolvency, as the chain was squeezed between discounters and more specialist retailers. [1] More than half of the 311 outlets were expected to close within a few months. [2]
The Tengelmann Group acquired 162 of the chain's stores in 2010. By the end of 2011, the number of stores in Germany had risen back to over 200. The new Woolworth GmbH has its headquarters in Unna, similar to chains such as KiK (founded in 1994), and TEDi, (founded in 2004). In February 2016 it opened its 300th store, and still plans to get back to 500 stores, although later than its initially stated target of 2015. Tengelmann has acquired the brand rights for a European expansion (excluding the UK), but as of 2016 has not yet opened a store outside Germany.
Frank Winfield Woolworth was an American entrepreneur, the founder of F. W. Woolworth Company, and the operator of variety stores known as "Five-and-Dimes" which featured a selection of low-priced 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 that customers could examine what they wanted to buy without the help of a sales clerk.
The F. W. Woolworth Company was a retail company and one of the original pioneers of the five-and-dime store. It was among the most successful American and international five-and-dime businesses, setting trends and creating the modern retail model that stores follow worldwide today.
Woolworth, Woolworth's, or Woolworths may refer to:
Metro AG is a German multinational company based in Düsseldorf which operates business membership only cash and carry stores primarily under Metro brand. Until 2020 it was also active in general retail business through Real division, which was sold to an investor consortium.
Woolco was an American-based discount retail chain. It was founded in 1962 in the city of Columbus, Ohio, by the F. W. Woolworth Company. It was a full-line discount department store unlike the five-and-dime Woolworth stores which operated at the time. At its peak, Woolco had hundreds of stores in the US, as well as in Canada and the United Kingdom. While the American stores were closed in 1983, the chain remained active in Canada until it was sold in 1994 to rival Walmart, which was looking to enter the Canadian market. All of the former UK Woolco stores were sold by Kingfisher, who had bought the UK Woolworth business, to Gateway who subsequently sold them to Asda.
Woolworths Group Limited, a major Australian company, has extensive retail interests throughout Australia and New Zealand. It is the largest company in Australia by revenue and the second-largest in New Zealand. Despite taking the Woolworths name when it was founded in Sydney in 1924, Woolworths Group has always been independent of the Woolworths Group in the UK, and the South African chain of retail stores, Woolworths Holdings Limited. Its main operations include supermarkets and discount department stores under the Big W name in Australia.
A discount store or discounter offers a retail format in which products are sold at prices that are in principle lower than an actual or supposed "full retail price". Discounters rely on bulk purchasing and efficient distribution to keep down costs.
Woolworths Group was a listed British company that owned the High Street retail chain Woolworths. It also owned other companies such as the entertainment distributor Entertainment UK, and book and resource distributor Bertram Books.
Waldenbooks, operated by the Walden Book Company, Inc., was an American shopping mall-based bookstore chain and a subsidiary of Borders Group. The chain also ran a video game and software chain under the name Waldensoftware, as well as a children's educational toy chain under Walden Kids. In 2011, the chain was liquidated in bankruptcy.
Foot Locker Retail, Inc. is an American sportswear and footwear retailer, with its headquarters in Midtown Manhattan, New York City, and operating in 28 countries.
Karstadt Warenhaus GmbH is a German department store chain whose headquarters are in Essen. Until 30 September 2010 the company was a subsidiary of Arcandor AG and was responsible within the group for the business segment of over-the-counter retail.
Woolworths was a New Zealand supermarket chain and a unit of Woolworths Group in Australia. The brand was phased-out in the late 2000s, with all stores rebranded as Countdown by 2011.
Coles Group Limited is an Australian public company operating several retail chains. Its chief operations are primarily concerned with the sale of food and groceries through its flagship supermarket chain Coles, and the sale of liquor and petrol through its Coles Liquor and Coles Express outlets. Since its foundation in Collingwood, Victoria in 1914, Coles has grown to become the second-largest retailer in Australia after its principal rival Woolworths in terms of revenue.
Tengelmann Warenhandelsgesellschaft KG, doing business as the Tengelmann Group, is a holding company based in Mülheim an der Ruhr, Germany.
Plus was a German multinational discount supermarket chain founded in 1972. It operated 2,840 stores in Germany with an approximate 27,000 employees and about 1,200 stores in several other European countries. The retail model was to sell low-cost groceries with no expense incurred for display or marketing of products. Groceries were stored in the shipping cartons they came in, rather than being stacked on shelves. In German advertising, the name "Plus" was used as a backronym for "Prima leben und sparen", featuring animated "little prices" as their mascot.
Charles Sumner Woolworth, was an American entrepreneur who went by the nickname of "Sum", opened and managed the world's first five-and-dime store in Scranton, Pennsylvania, and was founder of the "C. S. Woolworth & Co" chain of 5¢ & 10¢ stores. Sum's brother, Frank Winfield Woolworth was first to venture into the retail business with his own store, and soon after, he asked Sum to join him. Frank founded "F. W. Woolworth & Co", which later merged with other Woolworth affiliate stores to be the F. W. Woolworth Company. After the death of his brother, Sum became the longest serving Chairman of the F. W. Woolworth Company. During the early years, Sum also partnered with a long-time friend, Fred Kirby, to open a "Woolworth and Kirby" store in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania. When Fred bought out Sum's share, that store grew to become a "friendly rival" affiliate store, in close alliance with the two Woolworth brothers.
Big W was a large format chain of megastores owned by the Kingfisher Group in United Kingdom, which operated between 1998 and 2004. Big W consisted of Kingfisher's main retail chains that they owned at the time - Comet, B&Q, Superdrug and Woolworths in one store format. Despite sharing the name with the Australian chain of the same name, the two of them are not related, as they were owned by different companies.
Signa Holding GmbH is Austria’s largest privately owned real estate company. Signa was founded in 2000 by the Tyrolean entrepreneur René Benko. Over the years, the two-man company with an initial focus on classic real estate development has become a pan-European real estate group with more than 150 employees and offices in Vienna, Innsbruck, Munich, Düsseldorf, Luxembourg, Zurich, Bolzano, Berlin and Hamburg. The principal focus of the Signa Group of Companies is the long-term investment in real estate in prime city centre locations. Additionally Signa became the biggest owner of malls in Mid Europe with over 46.000 employees.