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An original share certificate from the F. W. Woolworth & Co Limited. It was one of the original American five-and-dime stores. The first Woolworth store was founded in 1879 by Frank Winfield Woolworth. Despite growing to be one of the largest retail chains in the world through most of the 20th century, increased competition led to its decline beginning in the 1980s. The chain went out of business in January 2009, when the company decided to focus on the Foot Locker division and renamed itself Venator Group. By 2001, the company focused exclusively on the sporting goods market, changing its name to the present Foot Locker Inc. Woolworths Group plc originally was the British unit of F.W. Woolworths, but operated independently as a separate company from 1982. On November 26, 2008 Woolworths Group plc announced that they were in too much debt to maintain their outgoing payments. The remaining British Woolworths stores closed by January 6, 2009, with the loss of almost 30,000 jobs. Property of Robert Pool