28th December

As a shelf stacker, unlike Woolworths' bosses I might not be able to see the bigger picture. But, like the ant crossing the carpet I was aware of some threads unravelling. Woolworths was foolish to go down market when Poundland was up and coming. Also the Worth It range cannot have been profitable - one laughing customer couldn't wait to get her iron home "to see if it works" - the stockroom usually had stacks of Worth It products brought back as faulty (which must have damaged Woolies reputation for affordable quality) Repeatedly I read that reporters visiting Woolworths stores saw only old people and young mums, yet as one old lady sadly remarked to me when we didn't have what she needed "Woolies used to be about needs, and now it's about wants" and she didn't want what we had. Maybe this was owing to the pursuit of marketing invention "Debbie" the working Mum who liked to see stylish new things every time she popped in, resulting in endless ranges of trays, tea towels and canisters (for tea, coffee etc) but a dearth of things like mops and scourers. And ladies support tights were scrapped. The young Mums were probably in for toys, kids' clothes and shoes, not tea canisters. People say that Woolworths lost out to Amazon for music, games and films. But you have to spend more than the price of one cd or dvd to get free postage from Amazon. Also not everyone has a computer, or a card they could use if they did, particularly people on a low income, or pocket money. I don't agree that the failure was caused by not moving out of town, coupled with not having a niche market. If you find walking hard you don't want to spend an hour scouring a supermarket for something you don't get every week - lightbulbs for example. In an ideal Woolworths you should be able to go in and get all non food items in one place, plus a good range of sweets.

Surely what Woolworths should have done years ago was sell the stores which didn't make a decent profit - the reason must be that they were not needed in their communities and would have brought in enough money to shore up those that were. There are other stores like ours where there is nowhere else to buy music, kids' clothes, shoes, toys, stationary, a range of decently priced brand name electrical apliances, lightbulbs cleaning products. If, like I soon will be, you are unemployed so unable to afford to travel elsewhere, how are you to buy any of these things? Over and over people say "Where will we get school uniform?" At the moment there is NOWHERE else here selling even kids' socks. And where will children spend their pocket money? What will they DO on cold wet weekends when they used to wander round Woolies making their minds up, seeing friends? The goverenment is talking about creating lots of jobs to give employment to those who can't find work. There were 3 jobs in our jobcentre last week. Where are all of this store's 17 employees to go? If no one buys our stores and those, like ours, which are profitable and needed in their communities, would it not be a good idea for the government to subsidise Argos or WHSmiths or Asda Homeware or Wilkinsons, to take them on? As one lady said when first hearing that our store was closing "But where will we go on Sunday afternoon? We will have to leave the island!"