The UK’s leading general merchandise retail group.

No. 1 in sales of home entertainment products (music, video, computer games).

6.5 million customer visits to a Woolworths store each week.

823 retail outlets nationwide.

Employs approx. 33,000 people.

Turn over more than £2.9 billion for 2004.

Woolworths charity – Woolworths Kids First has raised over £3.5 million since their launch.

Woolworths Kids First netted £180,000 from sales of Spiderman badges.

Group consists of Woolworths, Woolworths big W, EUK, Streets online and 2 entertain.

Own brands include Chad Valley (toys), Ladybird (kids clothing), Gloss (kids clothing), Cook! (kitchenware), Etcetera (Menswear) and Colourplay (stationary).

First store opened in Utica, New York on Feb 22nd 1879, by Frank Winfield Woolworth.

First British Store opened on 5th November 1909 on Church Street, Liverpool.

David Bowie thinks of himself musically as ‘Woolies’ rather than a specialist boutique.

Richard Curtis screenwriter of Notting Hill apparently chose to live there because it was close to a ‘Woolies’.

The first artificial Christmas tree that Woolworths sold used goose feathers to resemble pine leaves.

Woolies sells 4.1 million litres of paint a year – enough to paint Tower Bridge 40 times.

Woolworths sells 172 CDs a minute.

Every Christmas Woolies sells enough blank tapes to record the entire output of BBC Television for the next 300 years.

Over Christmas, 85% of the population will visit a Woolworths store, buying enough crackers to lay a table from Lands End to John O’Grouts (8 million)

Woolworths sells enough baubles at Christmas to fill Old Trafford (10 million)

and enough Christmas tree decorations to decorate every tree in the New Forest from top to bottom (4million).

If you stacked up all the Playstation games Woolworths sells at Christmas, it would be 59 times higher than Canary Whalf.

1.3 million sets of Christmas lights – enough to illuminate the Statue of Liberty 100 times.

At Christmas, 7 million packs of batteries – which when placed end to end would stretch from London to Madrid.

Enough rolls of Christmas wrapping paper to reach from England to Australia (5.5 million).

So many angels at Christmas that, when stacked, would be twice as tall as the Eiffel Tower (63,000).

At Christmas Woolworths sells the equivalent weight in Now That’s What I Call Music albums (400,000) to that of eight elephants.