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Woolco was a discount department store owned by F.W. Woolworth. It operated in the countries of America, Canada, and the United Kingdom.
History[]
In the 1950s and beyond, America had a boom of suburban development. Woolworth stores were usually located in downtown areas, far away from suburbia, So Woolworth decided that they needed to make a primarily suburban discount department store chain to compete with other stores, such as Kmart and Target, which were founded the same year. Woolco opened its first store in the USA in 1962.
Throughout the 1960s, the company expanded to 100s of stores in America, and soon after, in Canada and the UK as well. Woolco did particularly well in Canada and the UK, this is becuase there wasn't as much competition as there was in America.
In the 1970s, Woolco was declining in the USA. So, Woolworth decided to downsize some of their American stores. This included removing departments that were leased out by other retailers. Any newer stores would only be around 60 000 square feet, instead of the 100 000 square feet that earlier stores were.
In 1983, Woolworth decided that it just wasn't economically viable to continue running Woolco in the USA. So they liquidated all of their American stores. They continued to run Woolworth stores in the US until 1997.
In 1982, Woolworth (UK) separated from F.W. Woolworth. Because of this, these stores weren't effected from the American Liquidation. In 1986, Woolco UK met its demise when the stores were sold to Gateway / Somerfield. The stores were later rebranded to Asda after they bought the former chain.
In Canada, Woolco continued to operate until 1994 when Walmart bought out most of the stores and turned them into Walmart Canada.