Five And Dimes Were The Main Stay Of Main Street For Generations
September 15, 2023
source: Flickr
The history of five and dime stores, like Woolworth’s and Kresge’s, is a fascinating part of American retail history. In 1878, Frank Woolworth opened his first store, and just a year later, he launched an even more successful one. These stores introduced the concept of five and dime retailing, featuring fixed prices that attracted large crowds of customers. This innovation led to the proliferation of variety stores across America, becoming a familiar presence on Main Streets nationwide.
These stores offered not only fixed prices but also captivating displays and groundbreaking business practices, creating a shopping experience vastly different from the traditional general stores of the past. In those earlier establishments, much of the merchandise had to be retrieved from behind the store counter or from bulk bins.
In 1897, Sebastian Kresge and John McCrory established their own dime store in Memphis, Tennessee. Remarkably, within just 15 years of entering the business, Kresge’s company was valued at $7 million and operated 85 stores.
By 1910, Frank Woolworth had amassed a considerable fortune and embarked on an ambitious project: the construction of the world’s tallest skyscraper in New York City. Woolworth financed the construction entirely with cash. While Woolworth’s store only occupied one and a half floors of the grand Woolworth Building, it symbolized the extraordinary success of the company.
Variety stores soon expanded their product offerings, organizing them into distinct departments and even providing food service at their dining counters. However, following the Great Depression and subsequent inflation, prices exceeded the traditional five and ten-cent range, leading to the occasional reference to these stores as “dollar stores.”
Woolworth’s expanded its presence internationally, becoming one of the world’s largest retail companies. Nevertheless, with mergers, the ascent of major retailers, and the emergence of all-encompassing drugstores, the traditional five and dime stores found it increasingly challenging to compete in the U.S. Sebastian Kresge’s venture eventually evolved into Kmart.
In 1997, Woolworth’s closed its final store after struggling for decades to keep up with its competitors, and many smaller five and dime stores had already ceased operations well before this. Nonetheless, these iconic stores hold a special place in our memories. For those of us who shopped with our parents or worked our first jobs in them, they represented a unique shopping experience where a diverse array of products could be found in one place at reasonable prices.