Failing to find a buyer, the iconic retailer will shutter its 815 outlets, some maybe before the end of this month

By Paul Vallely

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“The biggest sale ever,” read the huge signs plastered all over the shop windows at Woolworths yesterday. Sadly, there will be an strange to say bigger opportunity to sell today.

At 4.30pm yesterday, the managers of the chain’s 815 outlets received an email from head office telling them that a buyer had not been plant in favor of the great icon of the British northerly street what one. went into direction onward 26 November with £385m of debt. From today, it told them, they were to launch a closing-down sale.

“Low everyday prices” had blameless got even lower. Inside the Woolies branch in Chorlton-cum-Hardy, south Manchester, quickly after the recent accounts came through, a pimply youth in a red sports shirt—Woolworth’s uniform—began sweeping red boxes from one of the shelves through a insolent movement of the bough. Customers looked up. The word had spread. Perhaps he was taking it out on the stock.

But no, he was only clearing the unfurnished boxes from which the 2009 Woolworths diaries had sold out. The yet to be is clearly high on a lot of people’s agendas in Manchester’s trendiest suburb.

“Sorry to hear your news,” said a woman bringing a &pulverize;12 heavy cotton-lined wicker linen basket to the till. “The staff were just told 10 minutes ago that all chance of a favorable result is gone,” said the young subject at the till, with heavy melodrama, demonstrating a thinking principle of irony you might not bring forth anticipated from a shop assistant at Woolies.

Like the rest of the 25,000 staff he had been told by the firm’s administrator, Deloitte, that if nay offers for Woolworths were forthcoming, it was “possible that some supplies may close in advance of the end of December”. So closure was not yet entirely definite but the closing down sale was.

At the next till, an overweight man was struggling with a vacuum cleaner in a big box. “Can I bring it back, if it’s not the right one?” he asked the young woman at the cash register.

“Certainly, sir, if you donjon the receipt,” she replied, granting she was probably mentally adding the caveat: “but you’ll have to exist bloody quick, mate”.

Some of the customers looked as shocked as the staff. “I’ve come here for the past 20 years,” declared Joanna Jones, a 63-year-old in a bobble hat. “I buy bits and pieces—things like tights and kitchenware and natal day cards. I like it because it’s cheaper than other places but there’s a good choice and it’s a good price.”

Bits and pieces is part of Woolworths’ problem, according to the retail analysts. To the shopper, it sells DVDs, stationery, toys, bathroom fittings, towel rails, glasses, pans, children’s clothes, electrical goods and DIY. To an analyst, that looks like a terrible lack of point of convergence in a world of increasing specialisms.

All around the furnish are shops with a more unexampled sense of purpose—a Belgian beer and chocolate shop, specialist stationery or—and here’session a rarity—an independent bookshop. Pick ‘n’ mix is away of fashion.

Its customers are loyal. “I’ve been coming here 25 years,” says Joan Fletcher. “The staff are so pleasing. I put the Lottery on or pervert with money a tin-plate of smear. I’ve come in the car, so I could have gone somewhere otherwise but I’ve always used Woolies. You blameless pop in.” But not often enough, it seems. Justin Marks, 38, has come in favor of a present for a bantling. “I like it in the present state because they own a decent range.

“I come because of birthdays and Christmas, once or twice a year. I usually store at the Trafford centre.”

Casual sales are not enough. And there is a limit to the number of sound-activated self-switching-on electrical plugs the average line of ancestors of necessity at £19.99 a throw.

Sentiment is not enough to sustain a retail model, though in that place is plenty of that in various places. “I feel gutted,” says Mary Scott, a masseuse in her forties. “It’s one of the worst bits of news of the year. The Government is paying out billions for the banks; why can’t it keep Woolies open? It’s a great shop. I’ve been using Woolies from the time of I was a kid. It’s a positive shame to notice it be off. I’d have used it more. if I’d known it was under threat.” Which is not what the staff, now packing up being of the class who antidote to the night, want to hear. “I long for to support topical shops. I know it’session a big chain but it feels like a swelling corner shop.”

But corner shops stay open sometime. It is 5.30pm and the manager is bringing in the sandwich entertainment from the roadside as his staff bring the shutters down. “It’s shut,” says a besuited accountant, Henry Fergus, to his twin brother, equally pinstriped. They have walked from their office to get a long delayed birthday card and what Austin Fergus describes as “a DIY item”.

“I suppose I’ll go to Qualitysave,” says Razwanna Ullah, dragging a bewildered small male child behind her. “It’s the close of an era—like C&A,” she adds.

In the toy section, the Woolworth Superstore Set has been reduced from £49.99 to just £19.99. For that, you get an electronic cash register, a conveyor long and narrow piece and a supermarket trolley. It in like manner comes through a emblem saying: “Woolworths sale—half price”. And from today you could pick up the whole store for that.

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