Frank Woolworth's early buying trips to Europe

Frank Woolworth had a lifelong love affair with Europe. As a boy he was a regular visitor to the abandoned home of Napoleon Bonaparte's brother Joseph in upstate New York. He read stories of battles and nobility, of fantastic wealth and opulent treasures. As he grew older and more affluent, he followed the fashion by paying researchers to trace his ancestry. This revealed strong links to 'the old country' and an original family seat in Woolley, Cambridgeshire, England. A fat fee even produced 'evidence' that his ancestors had emigrated to the USA aboard the Mayflower with the Pilgrim Fathers.

But in 1890 he had a more pressing reason for going to Europe - money! As the chain had grown, Woolworth had become impatient with the wholesalers who acted as agents for domestic and particularly overseas goods. The Five and Ten had created a huge demand. Woolworth felt that the middlemen did not add enough value to justify their commission. He sought advice from his network of contacts. They suggested he should to trace products back to their source and buy direct. He struck a friendship with B.F. ('Pop') Hunt Jr., a Buyer for one of the country's largest toy importers, Horace Partridge & Co., who invited the five-and-ten magnate to join him on a trip to Europe.

Hunt and Woolworth set sail for Europe on February 19, 1890 - bound for Liverpool. Frank left his trusted lieutenant Carson Peck in charge of the Company at home, promising to keep all of his Managers appraised of his progress and the European products that they would soon receive. His letters survive and give a fascinating insight into life in the 1890s. They highlight the faster progress that European manufacturing industries had made compared with their American counterparts.

Frank had never sailed before. It is clear from his letters that he found the voyage very uncomfortable. He never found his sea legs in over fifty transatlantic trips, and always chose the fastest possible crossing. The riches generated by the European trips provided sufficient compensation to put up with five days of sickness.

He held true to his word and wrote letters to his New York office, in which he described the events of each day in detail.

Thursday: On deck part of the day, but awful sick morning till night. Did not eat anything at all. I don't see any pleasure in going to sea. I wish I was home. Why was I such a fool to leave home?"

"Saturday: Pulled on my waterproof Ulster and managed to get up on deck. It was the grandest sight I ever saw. The waves were mountains high, fifty feet I should say... I am getting very weak and unless I eat soon I shall starve...

Sunday: The sea is calmer but I still can't eat.

Monday: A fine and bright day and the sea comparatively calm. I'm still starving.

Tuesday 10pm: We just passed Fastnet Light and are in the Irish Sea. Everything is calm and my sickness is gone. Have forgotten how sick I was already."

During the first crossing Woolworth told Pop Hunt about the sorts of products he was looking for. The two men prepared an itinerary for a round trip across Europe, in which they would visit the main manufacturing centres for each product group. They planned to buy china and housewares from Staffordshire, postcards and books from London, England, toys and decorations from Hannover and Dresden in Germany, clocks from Geneva, Switzerland and fancy goods in Paris, France. They would be able to make most of the round-trip by steam train, using a horse and carriage for the final furlong. Woolworth was relieved to hear that it would only take a few hours to sail across the English Channel !

Landing in Liverpool, Frank Woolworth headed for the potteries of Staffordshire. He visited more than twenty five potteries before deciding who to buy from. In the end he ordered a large shipment of willow china in Hanley, to be shipped through Liverpool back to the Woolworth reshipping warehouse in New York City.

Commenting on Stoke-on-Trent he wrote:

The shops, we cannot call them stores, are very small and dark as a pocket. They have no street cars but tram cars run by a dummy steam engine. The cars are two story and plastered all over with advertisements.

In London he added:

They have some fine stores in London, but we have not found them. I think a good penny and sixpence store run by a live Yankee would create a storm here, but maybe not.

Frank bought scrapbooks and albums in London before he and Pop Hunt moved on to Germany. As they travelled through Holland, Frank noted that Flemish was very hard to understand and that he did not care for Dutch cuisine. He loved Frankfurt, describing its fine cathedral and clean air, and chastised himself for never learning German. From Frankfurt the entrepreneurs headed to Sonneberg, which was the heart of the toy industry. Woolworth noted that dolls were assembled as piece-work by people at home, before being packed up and sold by wholesalers.

Using Hunt as an interpreter Woolworth espoused some of the home workers. He established a "win-win", agreeing to pay them a little more to sell to him directly. This achieved a substantial saving over the rate he had previously paid to a wholesaler. He later built a large warehouse at Sonneberg, which paid cash for finished goods. It attracted a constant stream of homeworkers and became the source of the cream of the Woolworth range in North America.

While in Sonneberg on his first trip to Europe in 1890 Frank Woolworth also placed a huge order for glass Christmas tree ornaments. He noted in a letter home

While in Sonneberg I gave a large order (over 1,500 gross) for Christmas tree ornaments and I am pointed out on every corner of the street as the big buyer of tree ornaments and they tackle me everywhere trying to sell me more.

As you can see in our Christmas Gallery, these decorations were a key part of the Woolworths success story, with many millions of units sold in Frank's lifetime and, with a gap from 1914-1918, through to the Second World War.

While in Germany Frank also discovered printers who could produce colour postcards, enhanced from simple black and white photos. These were very popular in the USA, and each of Frank's syndicate of friendly rivals requested stocks of local views for each store, with his brother Sum offering the widest variety of postcards, lettercards and in local picture view books. Many survive to this day and gave useful insight in preparing the Original Virtual Museum.

As he returned home onboard the SS Etruria in May 1890, Frank Woolworth knew that he had struck gold and that his three month trip had been time well spent. He returned to Europe twice a year for the next quarter of a century. By the outbreak of the Great War in 1914, imported goods accounted for a fifth of the Five and Ten's sales in the USA and Canada and provided the icing on the chain's cake.

No wonder Frank loved Europe !

Shortcuts to other exhibits in our 1800s Gallery

1800s Overview: the story begins
Formative years of the Woolworth Brothers
Birthplace - Augsbury & Moore, Watertown, NY
The first five cent table
Experimental five cent store in Utica (a flop)
First successful store - Lancaster PA 1879
The 'friendly rivals' buying syndicate
Frank Woolworth's early buying trips to Europe