Anyone familiar with my tweets or blog will know that I have a not-so-secret retail predilection: Woolworths.

Anyone familiar with my tweets or blog will know that I have a not-so-secret retail predilection: Woolworths.

As I travel around the country, visiting high streets and retailers from the Highlands to Penzance I locate, photograph and keep track of as many former Woolworths sites as I can.

So far I’ve notched up 233 of the 807 locations that Woolworths traded from at the time it collapsed into administration in 2008, meaning that at this pace I should have got them all by 2024.

So why my fascination with a defunct retailer? Partly it’s historical interest. Woolworths may be gone, but its architectural legacy of purpose-built stores from the 1920s to the 1970s is unique and remarkable, and many of those properties are still instantly recognisable as ex-Woolies.

Then there’s the scale and speed of the 99-year-old chain’s demise, from 807 stores to none in just 40 days. At the time, Woolies’ death shook Britain’s town centres to an extent not seen before or since, leaving thousands out of work and hundreds of places without one of their largest stores.

Perhaps most fascinating, however, is what the fate of former Woolworths sites tells us about how our high streets are changing. Looking through the lens of Woolies helps us to understand how different retail centres are faring, and to celebrate the modern-day retailers that are thriving where Woolworths struggled.

For instance, the fact that only nine of the stores I’ve visited are at present empty is a welcome counter to the usual doom-laden headlines. Meanwhile, expanding and profitable discounters such as Iceland, B&M and Poundland, which occupy more of these ex-Woolies sites than anybody else, are true retail success stories.

When the local Sunday tabloid ran a spread on my unusual penchant, it did so under the predictable yet rather ouch-inducing headline ‘Gateshead man tells of Woolworths obsession’. ‘Passion’, surely, would have been preferable.

Still, if my ‘obsession’ helps to big up our high streets and our great retail industry, then it is, as Woolies would have said, definitely Worthit!

  • Graham Soult, Retail consultant, CannyInsights.com