Big W

Big W (styled as BIG W) is a chain of discount department stores in Australia. It is a division of Woolworths Limited. The chain has 185 stores, an online store at www.bigw.com.au, 22,000 team members and is the leading Australian department store chain in revenue.

History

Woolworths Limited's original Woolworths Variety stores carried a range of general merchandise. An increasing percentage of later stores opened sold supermarket grocery lines, which eventually became the company's focus. In the 1960s, the company created Big W discount variety stores to complement Woolworths Supermarkets and, ultimately, replace the extensive variety store network.

The first Big W stand-alone store opened in 1976 in Tamworth. A further 13 stores were opened within two years. The separation of Big W and Woolworths supermarkets was largely completed by 1989, although a few Woolworths variety stores operated into the 1990s (such as the one in Rundle Mall, Adelaide).

In 2006, Woolworths and Big W implemented Retalix point of sale systems running on IBM POS hardware with LCD touch-screens in all stores.

Big W (UK Chain)

Big W was a large format chain of megastores owned by the Kingfisher Group (later Woolworths Group PLC). This chain was composed of Kingfisher's brands, which were Comet, B&Q, Superdrug and Woolworths in one large shop. In 2000, Peacocks and British Food Group teamed up with Kingfisher to create Clothing and Food brands for Big W. However, Only 7 of the stores supplied food. There were 21 stores in the chain. In 2002, after Kingfisher sold off Woolworths, the stores added Woolworths in their names, becoming "Woolworths Big W" and sold only Woolworths products, Newly opened stores since 2002 already had the Woolworths name in the Big W Logo. Woolworths discontinued the chain around early 2004 and at the same time, they sold off the 7 stores that had permission to sell food to Asda and Tesco; the remaining 14 became regular Woolworths Stores or were downsized, meaning that some Woolworths in Retail Parks shared half of the store with another retailer. Peacocks also shared half of these stores with Woolworths. They remained until the 2008 administration and most of the stores now house The Range.

Big W (disambiguation)

Big W (or BIG W) may refer to one of two unrelated retail operations:

See also