Still Going Strong -- Enduring Woolworth Brings Its Stockholders To Town

To most Americans, Woolworth's evokes a nostalgia associated with Saturday afternoon trips to the local five-and-dime store for an ice-cream sundae, a package of baseball cards or a tube of lipstick.

But for the shareholders who will gather in Seattle tomorrow for the Woolworth Corp.'s annual meeting, the company is far more than a nickel-and-dime operation.

Though still best known for its general merchandise stores, the company, with $9.7 billion in sales last year, generates 43 percent of its revenue and 48 percent of its profits from about 40 specialty-store chains in North America, Europe and Australia.

Among its best known U.S. subsidiaries are Kinney Shoes, a family shoe chain; Foot Locker, which sells athletic shoes and apparel; Kids Mart; and Afterthoughts, a chain of women's accessory stores.

Frances Trachter, Woolworth vice president for corporate affairs, said the New York-based company changes its annual meeting site each year so that shareholders everywhere eventually have the chance to attend a meeting in their region. Recent meetings have been held in Memphis, Tenn., Los Angeles and New Orleans.

"We have never had an annual meeting in the Pacific Northwest," Trachter said. "And we felt Seattle was a pretty terrific place to have one."

The meeting, open to shareholders only, will be at 10 a.m. at the Seattle Sheraton.

Having closed its store in Northgate Mall last fall after mall management refused to renew its lease, saying Woolworth no longer fits Northgate's fashioned-oriented image, the only remaining Woolworth general merchandise store in the Seattle area is in downtown Seattle at Third Avenue and Pike Street.

Woolworth has been at that site since 1907. Barry Thomson, Woolworth senior vice president of administration, said the company has no intention of moving or closing the store. In fact, he said, the store is being refurbished.

The scene in the Seattle store on a weekday suggests that there still is a healthy customer base for Woolworth's variety stores, where dollars stretch far. Young working women on their lunch hour browse through the cosmetics section where some lipsticks and nail polish sell for $1, and a table in the apparel section offers a pile of women's underwear at $2.69 a pair. Signs everywhere say, "Values . . . Our tradition."

Along the front window are inexpensive Seattle souvenirs, including mugs for $2.99, hats, shot glasses and letter openers. A four-sides bulk candy counter dominates the center of the floor, where customers can buy bags of candy corn, malted milk balls and jelly beans. The menu for the lunch-time crowd includes BLTs, ham-and-cheese sandwiches and milkshakes.

Despite the company's continuous expansion into new specialty-store formats, Thomson said Woolworth "is not in any way, shape or form phasing out the general merchandise format. We are still opening full-line Woolworth stores."

Analysts generally expect companywide sales and profits to increase by 5 percent to 8 percent this year, helped in part by its strong presence in such foreign markets as Germany.

WOOLWORTH -- Headquarters: New York -- 1990 sales: $9.78 billion, up 10.9 percent -- 1990 profits: $317 million, down 3.6 percent -- 1990 Washington sales: $62.4 million -- Total stores, including specialty stores, in Washington: 95 -- Number of Washington employees: 683