In the 1950’s and 60’s, America began spreading out of its cities and into the suburbs. The big names in retail were moving out of downtown and into suburban malls and shopping centers. Woolworth had long been a staple of downtowns and saw many of its customers moving out to the suburbs and to larger discount stores. This was the beginning of K-Mart, Target and Wal-Mart type stores and Woolworth wanted to be in the mix. They felt that their Woolworth format needed tweaking before they committed to larger sized stores, so they launched an entirely new enterprise- Woolco.
Woolco was seen as being a sure bet to succeed. After all, it had the ample resources of one of the biggest retail companies in the world. Woolworth was trying it all at the time, including mall stores, but Woolco was its biggest project. Unfortunately, it was probably getting to be too much for the company to handle. Woolco buyers were having a hard time filling up its cavernous stores. They began leasing out extra space and moving in some of their mall stores. Eventually, they chose to close Woolco and eventually Woolworth to concentrate on their remaining mall store- Foot Locker.
