Originally Posted by
ErinKC
Ah yes, I'm reading the wiki page now. It's originally an American company, founded in NY in 1879 as the F.W. Woolworth Company. I also forgot that Woolworths was the sight of the 1960 lunch counter sit in, in North Carolina during the civil rights movement!
By 1979, it was the largest department store chain in the world.
The British version, originally a division of the F.W. Woolworth Company, opened in Liverpool in 1909. It split off from the American brand in 1982 when it was purchased by Paternoster Stores Ltd, which later from the Woolworth's Group. It looks like its demise, at least in part, was due to the 2008 financial crisis.
The Australian version, which appears to still be in business, is an entirely separate entity, founded in 1924, that just snatched the name! I just read this on that wiki page: The name on the draft prospectus drawn up by Cecil Scott Waine was "Walworth's Bazaar" – a play on the name of F.W. Woolworth, the owner of the Woolworth's chain in the United States and United Kingdom. According to Ernest Robert Williams, Percy Christmas dared him to register the name Woolworths instead, which he succeeded in doing after finding out the name was available for use in New South Wales.