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Keeping prices below sixpence |
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Despite the Company's immense buying power, price inflation as Britain came out of the great depression of the early 1930s made it harder and harder to maintain an upper price limit of sixpence. Several suppliers of the time quite admired Woolworths for passing up their offers because the items were too expensive - and record the lengths they went to in order to drive down their costs to meet the requirement. | |||
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| But to avoid the danger that less variety of merchandise would be available, the Buyers used all sorts of tricks to stick within the upper limit. For example saucepans and lids were sold separately at sixpence each - making a total price of a shilling (5p). Socks and shoes were sold individually rather than in pairs - leading to many music hall jokes about customers with only one leg. | ||||
| Where
an item attracted a government tax, this was shown separately - meaning
that a gas lighter sold for a shilling, but customers understood that
half of the price was going straight to H. M. Treasury. A similar
approach was used to handle a threepenny tax on playing cards in the
1930s.
Other items were sold in smaller quantities - some example are
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Probably the best-loved "sixpenny" product of the 1930s was the Woolworth 6D camera. For many young customers this was their first ever camera - at a fraction of the price in anybody else's store. Known as the "V.P. Twin" the cameras were made for F. W. Woolworth by Edbar International and were sold as two or three individual sixpenny parts, none of which was useful without the others. | |||
| The Camera shell, back plate and a choice of two carrying cases were each sold separately (for 6D each), while a 12 exposure film was 3D and developing and printing of up to 12 pictures was just 4D. Many young customers spent 7D a week to buy a new film and to have last week's one developed and printed. The more adventurous took the 2D developing only service and printed their own ! |  |
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As well as being a clever marketing ploy, keeping prices below sixpence had a very practical benefit for customers. It meant that they could buy just what they needed | |||
| without waste. In the beautifully-named "Boot Economy Department, (which is called Footwear Accessories today,) if you just wanted one stick on heel, that was just fine! Thrifty thirties customers loved the idea and put Woolies to the top of their shopping list - while our Buyers scoured the world for more amazing items to fit the company slogan "where sixpence works wonders". You'll find plenty of examples in the next part of our 1930s Gallery here in the Woolworths Virtual Museum. |  |
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Opening
gambit - transforming the High Street Flotation
on the London Stock Exchange |
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