Woolies

[Tom Hark Preston Park]

All Woolworths stores to close by January 5, administrators just announced ...

Hope the poor buggers that are still working there are being paid cash in hand or have had their wages ring-fenced. Else they should just walk out with armfuls of Xbox games, which seem to be about the only things not being carted off by pikeys.

 

[Lady Bracknell]

Yesterday, Woolies mainly managed to sell me a bog brush that was missing the most useful element. The brush.

 

[Nottseagull]

. This is a company that have been mismanaged into administration - but no shortage of people lining up to buy it.

Really?

 

[Nottseagull]

Yesterday, Woolies mainly managed to sell me a bog brush that was missing the most useful element. The brush.

But it looked nice, right? Typical woman's purchase!

 

[Gully]

Yesterday, Woolies mainly managed to sell me a bog brush that was missing the most useful element. The brush.

...that would be the male version, only the female one has a brush on it!

 

[Gazwag]

But it looked nice, right? Typical woman's purchase!

It had 50% off so it had to be worth buying

 

[BUTTERBALL]

Real shame to see it go, Woolworths is a store we've all grown up with.

 

[strings]

I believe that Woolworths may be back.

In order to recoup some money, I believe the rights to the 'Woolworths' brand will be sold ff once the stores have closed.

So anyother company could run woolworths stores in the same way that BMW are able to build mini cars.

 

[csider]

Yesterday, Woolies mainly managed to sell me a bog brush that was missing the most useful element. The brush.

Am I missing a joke here or are you blind??

Why buy something with the main obvious useful item missing??

 

[seagulls4ever]

I got 5 DVDs for 50p each in there the other day. They were all pretty decent and new, just did not contain any covers (so just blank case for the DVD). Bargain!

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

Am I missing a joke here or are you blind??

Why buy something with the main obvious useful item missing??

Some of the top quality toilet brushes are encased in a toilet brush holder (brushed aluminium) and until you take off the cellophane wrapping you dont know if the brush is inside. Looks like Lord B wont be able to do his chores now.

 

[seagullsovergrimsby]

Some of the top quality toilet brushes are encased in a toilet brush holder (brushed aluminium) and until you take off the cellophane wrapping you dont know if the brush is inside. Looks like Lord B wont be able to do his chores now.

disregard the above post about top quality toilet brushes , I forgot we are talking about Woolworths

 

[maffew]

Yesterday, Woolies mainly managed to sell me a bog brush that was missing the most useful element. The brush.

um how come you didnt notice?

 

[Robot Chicken]

I went in to Hove Woolies to buy Sean White Snowboarding for the Wii, they had a shelf full of the boxes so I took one up to the till and queued for 10 minutes or so, when I got to the front the girl told me they were out of stock. Erm, excuse me? Why have the boxes out on display then? Waste of time.

 

[BensGrandad]

but no shortage of people lining up to buy it.

Not according to the administrators they have only had interest in about 300 of their stores and that is mainly from supermarkets who want to put a store back into the high street and not have shop like Woolworths but more like Asda, Tesco and Morrisons.


Apparently nobody wants to buy the company as it is and re trade in the same type of goods and to the same type of market.

 

[Pavilionaire]

There's a lot of talk in the media about the company being mismanaged but I'd take the opposite line.

In the last 10 years all of the major out of town supermarket brands have diverisifed their products, increased the sizes of their stores, grown in size and therefore increased the economies of scale, produced ever more sophisticated advertising campaigns AND offered free parking right outside the checkout till.

How Woolworths have managed to stay in business for as long as they have paying premium rents / having capital tied up in owned properties, no parking, no nmultiple income streams to cross-subsidise their operations is beyond me. This is a shop that, by the laws of the market, should have disappeared at least 10 years before now.

 

[footychick]

I went into Woolworths (Ely) today and it was almost bare, got a few stocking fillers though.

 

[house your seagull]

an albion fan who works for them told me that they sold off their estate when they left the kingfisher group - or kngfisher sold off their estate and then sold them or something, essentially asset stripping them. i'm not surprised the bidders haven't been queuing up.

so in effect woolworths have stock and f#ck all else. oh, and 25,000 staff to lay off.

not good.

 

[Storer68]

What's the tell tale sign, that your local branch, won't be there in a months time.

QUOTE]

Big signs all over the wiondows bearing the words "CLOSING DOWN SALE. EVERYTHING MUST GO!"

Should tell you all you need to know

 

[Guy Fawkes]

an albion fan who works for them told me that they sold off their estate when they left the kingfisher group - or kngfisher sold off their estate and then sold them or something, essentially asset stripping them. i'm not surprised the bidders haven't been queuing up.

so in effect woolworths have stock and f#ck all else. oh, and 25,000 staff to lay off.

not good.

When they broke up the kingfisher group to form seperate groups, which were comet and B&Q / superdrug / Woolies and MVC, Woolies group inherited a large proportion the debt, mostly down to the properties that they have, figures of around £250 million were banded around, since then, they had to sell off or return stock that they had, often at break even prices or lower, just to be able to buy in stock for their next promotion or key trading period (much to the annoyance of the staff, who would return entertainment goods, only for it to be sent back into stores a fortnight later for their next promotion because they had to free up cash in between promotion periods)

There's a lot of talk in the media about the company being mismanaged but I'd take the opposite line.

In the last 10 years all of the major out of town supermarket brands have diverisifed their products, increased the sizes of their stores, grown in size and therefore increased the economies of scale, produced ever more sophisticated advertising campaigns AND offered free parking right outside the checkout till.

How Woolworths have managed to stay in business for as long as they have paying premium rents / having capital tied up in owned properties, no parking, no nmultiple income streams to cross-subsidise their operations is beyond me. This is a shop that, by the laws of the market, should have disappeared at least 10 years before now.

One of the problems about the chain, and how it was mis-managed was that they agreed to take on too much debt when the group split, they never modernised their stock lines, instead they just continued to re-order stock that they had in the previous promotion, and the promotion before that, and the one before that etc...

A classic example was when MP3 players and I-pods were becoming popular, and there was a demand for them, Woolies decided not to stock them, but to continue to buy in cassette players, despite the fact that no one sold cassettes anymore.

The only way that Woolies lasted so long was by their continue cutting of staff budgets, which meant that there were fewer and fewer people to assist customers, to serve on tills (so longer queues) etc, which meant that customers were put off from shopping there as a result.

Also the cutting of staff numbers also meant that the shops were often left with new stock waiting to be put out on display, but there was no-one to do it as they were forced to cover the tills rather than fill up again, meaning that often stock failed to reach the shop floor while full price and profitable, and only went on sale when reduced, often to be sold at a loss.

It also meant that they suffered from alot of shoplifting as there was no-one to be able to watch and stop / deter shoplifters.

The Business plan for Woolies when they split was to be taken over, as they had no way of raising the capital needed to refinance the company, and to modernise the stores and the lines they had. They tried to make themselves look like they were in a stronger position than they really were when they had a potential investor, they decided to clear most the stock from the stockrooms to generate cash so that it could appear on thebooks, making it look healthier than it really was, but the buyer smelt a rat and pulled out of the deal, stating that if things were that good, they should return that cash to investors.

The company could have closed some of the unprofitable branches down, especially as some had their rental agreement contracts run out before this crisis, yet they were renewed rather than closed and the staff relocated.