Woolworth's First Gramophone Records

Woolworths started selling Gramophone Records for sixpence as a test in 1921 and extended the range nationwide in 1923

The Woolworth Building in Broadway Place, New York - headquarters of the five-and-ten chain

In 1920 Charles F. Valentine, who had become the Woolworth Treasurer (FD) in New York in 1919, visited the UK on a fact-finding mission. He wanted to visit some of the stores and meet the subsidiary's celebrated English Director William Stephenson. The visit was a success. At the end it was agreed that Stephenson would reciprocate, travelling to America to meet the parent company Board face-to-face. The trip also gave him the chance to see the latest innovations in some of the stateside stores.

There were many similarities on either side of the Atlantic. But Stephenson had been unaware of the phenomenal success that the Five-and-Ten had enjoyed on one range - gramophone records. They had been selling five inch single-sided 'Little Wonder' records since 1914. The chain had partenered a former Columbia Records executive called Henry Waterson and offered the tiny discs for ten cents each. They had proved immensely popular with the public in the USA and Canada, where some city centre stores sold as many as a thousand records in a single week. Stephenson liked the idea and vowed to do the same thing in Britain.

Fred Moore Woolworth (left) and William Lawrence Stephenson (Right), the first two Managng Directors of F. W. Woolworth & Co. Limited in the UK. These two men shaped the company and set it on the road to success. To his surprise Stephenson met with resistance from his boss Fred Woolworth when he proposed a small record counter in the stores. The MD was aware of the offer in the USA but felt that British households were poorer and did not own gramophones. He was prepared to permit a small trial, but no more.

The trial results were good, but the MD was unimpressed. The range was only extended across the full 150 stores after Fred Woolworth passed away suddenly in 1923 and Stephenson was named his successor.

Stephenson took Little Wonder as his model, but added a twist of his own as he developed a music offer in the UK. He hired two companies to produce records for Woolworth's. The Crystalle Recording Company and Vocalion were place in direct competition with each other. He told both firm's that the Threepenny and Sixpenny Stores would choose a single supplier at a later date based on sales performance. He argued that there was plenty of business to go around, particularly if the new partners found good songs. After five years of fierce rivalry selling mechanically-recorded discs, the two suppliers merged at the end of 1928. They had chosen to pool their resources to buy the equipment needed to record electronically. After the merger they rebranded their output 'Victory Records'. The higher sound quality helped them to quadruple their sales at Woolworth's. By the end of the decade weekly sales were approaching a quarter of a million records.

We've compiled some of the best selling songs of the era into a virtual juke box. You can access this if you have sufficient bandwidth by choosing an item in one of the pull-down menus below.