Randomly Noted

Until January, Britain’s 99-year-old Woolworths was a traditional street-front retailer: You walked in, found great bargains, paid a pittance, walked out. Then it went bust, the biggest retail casualtyof the recession, as DJN colleague Lilly Vitorovich reports. Now it’s reappearing as an online retailer under new owner Shop Direct Group, a catalogue and internet retailer. I reckon it has a chance of succeeding as long as prices stay low and the product line disciplined. In a period of austerity (and hopefully afterward, unless folks return to their profligate ways) consumers want good value products at the lowest prices. This is what Woolies always provided in the children’s apparel, toy, candy, DVD and greeting card arena. The supposed pleasure of leisurely browsing brick-and-mortar store aisles is over-rated. In particular, shopping online for the retailer’s well-regarded Ladybird line kids’ togs will appeal to parents, aunties and grandparents. The only potential glitch is this: Shop Direct’s CEO Mark Newton-Jones says prices won’t be the lowest in the market even though the retailer “will keep costs down by being only online and using Shop Direct’s existing distribution and warehouse network.”  Hmmm. Without super-attractive prices, the new-look Woolworths will get mowed over by the likes of Tesco PLC’s online store, among others, which offer a greater variety of attractively priced products, from soup to nuts. Literally.