American Parent Company's Hundredth Birthday in 1979

21 June 1879 marked a major landmark as the F. W. Woolworth Co. celebrated its hundredth anniversary with a series of special events. A century after Frank Woolworth first opened the door of his first Great Five Cent Store in North Queen Street, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the chain followed his lead and targeted the festivities on sales generation. The birthday captured the attention of the media. It received extensive coverage on television and a substantial nostalgic feature in the iconic Time Magazine, as well as thousands of local paper columns across North America. The stories largely eclipse the bid battle that was raging behind the scenes. As the year unfolded there were heritage products, mementoes for investors and gifts and parties for Associates and Retirees.

North American stores were issued with a series of five framed posters and asked to display them in the windows or near to the checkouts. Each carried the slogan "Values our Tradition since 1879", and showed a resplendent dimestore from the chain's earliest days. They were well received by customers, even in the most run-down of the five-and-tens.

A well orchestrated promotional campaign brought fresh bargains every fortnight to create a sale atmosphere in honour of the birthday. This gave the chain the opportunity to re-assert is value credentials while also drawing attention to its newer ranges of fashions, electricals and larger items. Customer spending rose as nostalgic TV ads encouraged old friends to return to Woolworth's, for a vanilla coke, a soda from the fountain, some popcorn or an ex-chart record for sixty-nine cents.

In the chain's birthplace, Lancaster, Pennsylvania, the local paper produced a special 100th Anniversary supplement with help from the Company. The covers featured group photographs of the store staff, with all of the Associates from the North Queen Street branch on the front and their counterparts from the more recent store in the nearby Lancaster Park City Shopping Center on the back. Inside it contained a 12-page history of the firm, including its international division and its British and German subsidiaries.

The celebration giveways included coloring books, menus with the slogan 'The Tradition of Value Lives On', free clown toys and finger puzzles and plastic six inch rulers. But, where once Frank Woolworth had insisted that promotional items had to be particularly well-made, older American Managers remember that every expense had been spared in assembling the selection of freebies.

Investors and staff received much more elegant mementoes. The Annual Report was distributed in a presentation sleeve and contained two full colour booklets, one telling the story of the first hundred years in words and pictures, and the other giving an overview of the firm's recent trading performance and future plans, supported by photographs of each of the retail brands and many of the countries where the giant corporation operated. Staff were given large gold-coloured commemorative coins, while investors were treated to the same coin encased in a heavy acetate paperweight. Everyone hoped that the copywriter was correct and that the Founder's simple value philosophy would continue to sustain the 3,000 store chain throughout its next century.