Woolies to be reborn as web shop
If you miss the dear old Woolies stores, take heart: the brand is due to live on as a web-only retailer under Direct Shop Group.
According to an article over on BetaNews, the much-loved British brand will be gracing screens up and down the country thanks to plans for its resurrection as an online-only store.
Shop Direct Group's chief executive officer, Mark Newton-Jones, has issued a press statement which announces his company's plans to “[re-launch] the Woolworths name online.” Describing the sadly defunct chain as “a much-loved brand that engenders huge affection among British consumers” and an “important part of the country's retail heritage,” Newton-Jones plans to launch the web store under the Woolies brand during 2009, 100 years since the first store was opened.
Before its sad demise as a bricks-and-mortar – which left many considerably out of pocket – the company had a long and profitable history of dabbling in technology sales. I personally can remember buying several Commodore 64 games from the chain – although that is, obviously, going back a few years now. In more recent times, the company wasn't afraid to throw its retail weight behind a particular new technology – with its support of Blu-ray rather than HD-DVD a case in point. Whether the brand now has any goodwill left in it after a bankruptcy that saw thousands left without jobs and shop fixtures and fittings being sold at a knockdown price remains to be seen.
Another unknown in all this is Shop Direct Group itself: although the plan to re-launch Woolworths is good news, it's difficult to see where the capital for the project is coming from. So far this year the group has had to lay off more than a thousand employees across the UK – not a good sign for a company due to resurrect a much-loved brand. Despite these belt-tightening measures, the group is confident of success – and hopes that the use of the Woolies brand will help grow its online sales to account for more than 70 percent of all business carried out by this time next year.
Pleased to see that Woolies lives on – in name, at least – or should the company be given a peaceful burial? Share your thoughts over in the forums.
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It was when I was a kid, you're just a cynical old man
Woolies died 15 years ago when they chaged their focus and revamped the stores to do more entertainment products and cut down on the cheap an cheerful basics they used to do well, it's just been coughing up blood ever since until this Christmas when they finally breathed their last.
I for one will not mourn their passing as they have been ridiculously overpriced and rubbish for ages. Die in peace? Rather just forget about them.
We do work for Just Sweets who owned all the sweet racks and sweets in the stores they've been hit really hard by this, tbh Just let it die I didn't buy from the shop and unless they do something special with the online side I personaly am not gonna buy there either.
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