Wondering about Woolies

A couple of months later, 805 shops across the UK were closed and the jobs axed.

A year on, and the nine Oxfordshire former Woolworths stores have seen mixed fortunes, with all but one picked out by businesses for re-use.

In Witney and in Cowley, they have been reborn as 99p stores; in Henley, Woolworths has turned into a Sainsbury’s, and the store at Thame is set to do likewise early next year.

The former Woolworths in Didcot rose from the ashes on the centenary anniversary of Woolworths in Britain, November 5, as the first Alworths — dubbed ‘son of Woolworths’ — under its former manager Helen Pook.

The Abingdon store is now part of the Thame-based Cargo homeware chain; fashion chain H&M has taken over the Banbury store, and supermarket Iceland is in Bicester.

Only the Wantage shop remains empty.

Ms Pook, who had worked for Woolworths for 23 years, said: “Now we employ 35 people here — more than half of them ex-Woolworths.”

She added: “I was out of work for 12 weeks. It was like suffering a bereavement. Former employees, both in stores and across stores, were almost like an extended family. Many of us still miss it very much.

“We got statutory redundancy but we had to go to the Job Centre, where most of us had never been before, and it was all very worrying.

“I was lucky because I got a job fairly quickly at a supermarket. At the same time I was delighted when I got the telephone call to manage the new Alworths.”

The post-Woolies life of the former Witney store manager, Martin Street, took a different turn.

He said: “I had worked for Woolworths for 20 years but when I was made redundant I took a conscious decision to quit retailing.

“But I was lucky too, because my wife, Debbie, a part-time pharmacologist at the John Radcliffe, was able to go full time. That meant that I could study to become a plumber, partly at home and partly by attending a college in Southampton.

“Now Martin Street Plumbing Services is just about to start trading.”

Mr Street, who has two children, Jamie, nine, and seven-year-old Ellen, said: “There were tell-tale signs that things weren’t good — lack of stock, reluctance to spend money, tumbling share price. But I am still astonished that it wasn’t saved.”

“But I have enjoyed being a part time house husband, seeing more of the children and being a part-time student.”

Nationwide, about 30,000 people lost their jobs when Woolworths collapsed. The name was bought by the Barclay brothers, owners of the Daily Telegraph, but it trades only online.

Former Woolworths board member Tony Page said he was still “heartbroken” about the fate of the business.

He added: “I would still love to see Woolworths again in the high street. I had my eye on Witney, which was one of the better performing stores, before it became a 99p store.”

Heather Debenham, who worked at the Didcot store as a sales assistant, said: “I was delighted to get the call from Helen Pook to come back and work at Alworths.

“Personally, the year has not been too bad for me but I imagine it might have been worse for others. Unfortunately I’ve lost touch with some of them.”

She added: “But the build-up to the day the doors finally shut in January was horrible. We felt we were kept in the dark.”

Former manager of Woolworths’ Bicester store, Alan Grieves, said: “I had spent 37 years working for Woolworths. It took me about six months to find a job with clothing and home goods store TK Maxx in Cowley.

“At first I toyed with the idea of retiring, then, after about three months I thought ‘I can’t stand this anymore’, and started looking for another job in retail.

“I was lucky in a way because I was old enough and ugly enough to understand what had happened. And my wife Karen works as a manageress of two chemists. But it was worrying financially all the same. I think it was worse for younger people with families.

“If you retire you can ease yourself into the new way of life. This was so sudden.”

He added: “I do still feel bitter about it all. In fact I am one of a few hundred of us who are taking receivers Deloitte to court for the way the redundancies were handled.”

He would not be drawn on the question of whether Woolworths failed because of the recession or because of poor management, except to say: “A bit of both. But in some ways the recession should have affected Woolworth less than some retailers since customers were turning away from more expensive places.”

Entrepreneur Andy Latham is now boss of Alworths after working for Woolworths for 28 years, rising eventually to head of store and commercial development. He agreed that Woolworths’ failure was partly poor management.

“About five million customers visited Woolworths each week, and five million customers can’t be wrong. But the stores were cluttered and difficult to navigate.

“On the other hand the toys, Chad Valley, were good; and so were the sweets. And the Ladybird clothes were a plus, too.”

The opening of Alworths Wokingham store this week brings the number of stores in the ‘son of Woolworths’ chain to five, all operating in former Woolworths premises: Didcot, Amersham, Evesham, Worcester, and Wokingham.

Mr Latham said he intended to have a total of 22 open by the end of 2010 — not necessarily all in ex-Woolies stores.

Might one of those new stores be at Wantage, the one remaining empty former Woolworths in Oxfordshire?

No promises were forthcoming. “It’s on the list,” said Mr Latham, “But not high on the list.”

He said the idea of Alworths was not to pile goods high and sell them cheap, but instead to offer value in the high street, “to occupy the middle ground”.

He confirmed that he had received an unfriendly letter from lawyers acting for the Barclay brothers, owners of the Woolworths name, alleging that the name Alworths was too close to Woolworths. “That is in the hands of my lawyers,” he said.