|
Launch of "The New Bond" - The F. W. Woolworth & Co. Ltd. Staff Magazine |
||||
 |
Frank
Winfield Woolworth was one of the world's great communicators. He
wrote to his stores every day - sometimes with instructions, sometimes
with sales ideas, but always with news. On his overseas buying
trips to Europe he would write not only to describe the new items that
would be in the stores next season, but also to describe the local
scenery, costume, even the food in the hotel restaurant.
From 1909 to the mid 1930s in Britain, both the Executive Office and Regional Offices sent daily mail to the stores - but it was all one-way communication. Then in June 1933 a member of the team at Metropolitan Regional Office had a brainwave - a house magazine. |
|||
|
|
||||
| And so in March 1933 "Metro News and Views" was born. A mixture of editorial from the office and news, views, hobbies and crafts contributed by the colleagues in-store - to be published each two months. The early copies were single-sided, typewritten and bound together with string. They were sold to colleagues for 3D a copy ("to cover production costs"). The editorial team did the typing and writing in their lunch hours. It was a riot - they simply couldn't produce enough copies. | ||||
| A
year later the company printers, Duttons of Liverpool, took over the
printing - as 500 copies were needed. The idea of allowing
colleagues to contribute anonymously if they wished to do so, and of
allowing criticism of the Company and its policies, but with a
"right to reply" for the top brass, was very popular.
It's a sign of the classless, open culture pioneered by our founder,
Frank Woolworth - and a recognition that it's store colleagues, not
executives, directors or investors who serve customers.
Also popular was the chance to write a poem, contribute a story, tell a joke or offer a recipé. |
 |
|||
 |
Appropriately the first photograph to appear in the magazine, exactly a year after the initial launch, is a picture of "The Boss" Frank D. Sprague, the Manager of the Metropolitan Region, who is credited with the idea. A veteran of the American company, joining in 1905, he moved to England in 1925, and was a popular leader. | |||
| By 1935 the mix of jokes, stories, inter-store sports news and photos of colleagues at work and play was making waves at Executive Office. "Perhaps the whole company should have a house magazine?" asked the Chairman, William Stevenson. "Does it make a profit?" asked his Deputy, Charlie Hubbard, and was surprised when Frank Sprague answered "Yes, and the stores where people read it make more sales and profit, too." |  |
|||
 |
Weeks
later the first edition of the new company house magazine (or as it was
described then Staff Magazine), "The New Bond" hit the
stores.
Why "The New Bond"? A bond between stores and offices perhaps, or an indication of the friendship and camaraderie that have always characterised Woolworths perhaps? The answer was in fact much more mundane. New Bond Street House was the name of the Company's fashionable Mayfair Head Office, and normally featured as the centrepiece of "The Editor's Causerie" - the editorial on Page 3. Woolworths still produce a house magazine to this day. Today it's called "The Woolies News", and under the skilled leadership of today's Head of Corporate Affairs Nicole Lander, it's still winning awards as the best company newspaper in Britain. |
|||
| Through
the pages of The New Bond, and its successors Woolworth News, Woolworths
News and Woolies News, and the copycat American publication Woolworth
World, we have a window on the world spanning almost 70 years.
Many of the pictures in our Virtual Museum are drawn from the
contributions of more than a million colleagues over that time.
Even some of the photos from the 1910s and 20s, long before publication
began, were contributed from colleagues' private collections and printed
in the magazine.
We see empires rise and fall. We see Kings and Queens. We see Summer and Winter. We see expansion and contraction. Success and failure. We see careers of forty or fifty years develop and blossom. We see loyalty and above all we see pride - that for five generations millions of Britons have visited our stores every week - and left at least sixpence poorer!
|
 |
|||
|
|
||||
|
|
||||
|
Opening
gambit - transforming the High Street Flotation
on the London Stock Exchange |
||||
