Early January 2024 marked 15 years from the collapse of Woolworths in the UK and the closure of its 807 mainly high street stores. There are several potential parents of the phrase ‘death of the high street’, spanning many decades, but for many the failure of the iconic Woolworths is the true signifier of retail change/high street collapse (depending on your view).

On the 10^th anniversary of the failure I wrote a piece on this blog about the collapse and the aftermath. I drew heavily on the work of the expert in this field Graham Soult (@soult) and his report on the fate of the stores 10 years on. In the interim 5 years Woolies has continued to fascinate and the nostalgic spectacles are often on view suggesting the need for its rebirth.

Well, it is now 2024 and we get to do it all again, as Graham Soult has updated his work and produced a report on Woolies 15 years on. As before it is meticulously researched and documented and has a wealth of detail and discussion on various issues and locations. If you have not seen it you can download a copy from the cannyinsights website.

I can’t do justice to the report’s detail in this post but amongst the headlines are:

• 83% of Woolies stores remain in use by other retailers;
• c40% of the sites house discount variety stores i.e. stores with a Woolies type offer;
• 20% of sites are now convenience grocers;
• Over the last 5 years there are fewer fashion occupiers, more subdivision and more independent users;
• There is more non-retail use than in 2019 and a growing number of sites have a housing component;
• 48% of the locations have the same tenant that took over 15 years ago.

At one level none of this is surprising; many of the trends are nationally and sectorally recognisable. But perhaps the stability is remarkable, though given the site locations and store buildings of many Woolworths, perhaps not? They were/are a key part of many towns’ streetscapes.

A final thought: in my previous blog post I questioned the nostalgia for Woolworths and suggested, using their own data, that for 20+ years they had been haemorrhaging customers. Many had already walked away from Woolies, so their collapse affected fewer retail customers than assumed – and that niche was filled quickly by B&M, Poundland and so on. Nostalgia was alive and well in 2009. For Woolies workers it was a disaster, but for their customers, was it really? Or is it (was it) mostly nostalgia and hype?

Woolworths collapsed in 2009. No one under 15 has ever seen one in real life. By 2008 their active customer base (of by then 4.5 million) was less than a third of 20 years prior. In 2024 how many of the British population of today have actually shopped in a Woolworths? As people know I am all for a bit of nostalgia, but it needs to be based on some reality, and I am not sure Woolworths is a viable phoenix. There are reasons they lost two-thirds of their customer base in a 20 year period.

Graham Soult’s work on this is really interesting and useful and it is well worth a read. But perhaps more for what it says about retail and high street change than for Woolworths.