page_title: Woolworths Group (Australia)
section_title: History
hierarchical_section_title: Woolworths Group (Australia) / History
caption_attribution_description: English: This building is a bit of a Sydney icon. I was extremely fortunate to get an excellent fare with Qantas for a return flight London/Sydney in August 2009 so I popped over to see my daughter and her fiance. I have put photos of the Sydney area earlier on Flickr - I have to show different places/aspects etc. (although some may be similar). August is coming to the end of winter in Sydney - but except for my first full day when there was some rain in the morning, it was sunny and warm, 29 degrees one day! It is colder and wetter back in Strabane in summer than it was in Sydney in winter!
context_page_description: Woolworths Group Limited, a major Australian company, has extensive retail interests throughout Australia and New Zealand. It is the second-largest company in Australia by revenue, after Perth-based retail-focused conglomerate Wesfarmers, and the second-largest in New Zealand. In addition, Woolworths Group is the largest takeaway liquor-retailer in Australia, the largest hotel and gaming poker-machine operator in Australia, and was the 19th-largest retailer in the world in 2008.
  Despite similar names, Woolworths Group has no affiliation with the F.W. Woolworth Company based in the United States, the now-defunct Woolworths Group in the UK or the South African chain of retail stores, Woolworths Holdings Limited. Its main operations include supermarkets, liquor retailing, hotels and pubs under the Australian Leisure and Hospitality Group umbrella, and discount department-stores under the Big W name in Australia.
context_section_description: Woolworths opened its first store, the Woolworths Stupendous Bargain Basement, in the old Imperial Arcade Pitt Street, Sydney, where Westfield Sydney now stands, on 5 December 1924. Its nominal capital was just £185,000, and although 85,000 shares were offered to the public, only 81,707 shares were subscribed for by 619 people, including the five founders – Percy Christmas, Stanley Chatterton, Cecil Scott Waine, George Creed and Ernest Williams. One of the foundation investors was Preston Lanchester Gowing, the then chairman of Gowings. The name on the draft prospectus drawn up by Cecil Scott Waine was "Wallworths Bazaar" – a play on the name of F.W. Woolworth, the owner of the Woolworth's chain in the United States and United Kingdom. Moreover, according to Ernest Robert Williams, Percy Christmas dared him to register the name Woolworths instead, which he succeeded in doing after finding out the name was available for use in New South Wales. Accordingly, Woolworths Ltd in Australia has no connection with the F.W. Woolworth Company in the United States, nor the Woolworths Group of UK. It also has no connection to the Woolworths Group in South Africa.
  The new Woolworths store was the first variety store in the world to use cash registers that print receipts for customers.
  Christmas set up a New Zealand general merchandise operation in Wellington in 1929. Woolworths New Zealand opened its first food store in Auckland in 1956, and supermarkets in 1971. Woolworths New Zealand was sold to the company that is now Lion Nathan in 1979, then sold to Dairy Farm International in 1990, now owned by Progressive Enterprises, a subsidiary of Foodland Associated Limited of Australia. In 2005 Woolworths Limited and Metcash Holdings agreed to purchase a demerged Foodland, and Progressive Enterprises and 23 of Foodland's Action supermarkets came under Woolworths' ownership. This acquisition brought total store numbers in Australia to near 750.
  During the late 1920s, the company grew, with a second store in Sydney and stores in Brisbane and Perth. It grew further in the 1930s, despite the depression, until by the end of 1933 it had 23 stores. In 1933 the first store in Melbourne was opened. On 1 April 1936 the company bought eight stores from Edments Ltd and opened its first store in Adelaide. The original Imperial Arcade store was moved to larger premises in Her Majesty's Arcade, a short distance along Pitt Street near the Market Street corner.
  World War II slowed the growth of Woolworths and the Australian and United States military used Woolworths' warehouses in Sydney for storage. After the war expansion was rapid and in 1955 Woolworths opened its 200th store, in the Civic Centre in Canberra (since closed). At this point Woolworths was still mainly a variety chain and had not moved into the food sector that uses the "Woolworths" brand today. This move began in 1955 when it opened its first supermarket at Beverly Hills, south-west of Sydney. The company bought the Rockmans chain of women's clothing stores in 1960.
  In the 1970s, the company started to open Big W discount department stores and the slow removal of many variety products from the supermarket and variety stores began. This process finished in 1989 when the last of the Woolworths Variety stores was closed (except the one in Rundle Mall) and the "Family Centres" were split into separate Big W and Woolworths supermarket stores. Woolworths acquired the Dick Smith Electronics consumer electronics chain in 1981 and expanded the consumer electronics arm of its business with the purchase of the Tandy chain in Australia from InterTan Inc in 2001. The company sold the Rockmans chain in 2000, and the Dick Smith Electronics chain in 2012.
caption: Woolworths flagship store in the Sydney CBD
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