It’s only six months ago that we learned that the recession was at its worst because we were about to loose one of the most important aspects of the High Street. A shop that nearly everyone identified with, was the staple of a Sunday trip to the seaside when all other stores was shut and had an amazing selection of confectionery was dying. Woolworth was gone.

Years ago as part of my economics A level, I did a report on how great Woolworths was and how it had created a huge force on the streets of Britain through amazing marketing and the ability to find a niche within which to sit and dominate. Frank knew his customers. He knew that in one country he should wear a moustache and in another he should be shaved (luckily the trip from the US to England was by boat which gave him plenty of time to grow one!)

Frank Woolworth started by selling goods at just 5 cents and 10 cents. Quite a strange concept at the time but it cemented the company in the hearts of millions and it’s an idea that continues today, check out Poundland for example. The thing is, back then it was different and it made waves. It was, at the end of the day, a gimmick and great marketing.

When Woolworths was on its way down last year, if you asked people what they did they’d usually just say ‘pick and mix’. It didn’t have a goal, it didn’t have a concept and it really didn’t have a place on the High Street. This wasn’t the recession causing their demise, it was them causing it.

They tried to boost sales by re-furbishing all the stores, somebody told them that the thing to do was to put laminate flooring all the way through and although apparently sales picked up a bit, there was no way they could survive given the incredible amounts of debt they’d stacked up due to years of not knowing where they were going.

Frank’s original idea had been left behind decades ago and now it was just a general store selling anything to anybody and nobody really knew what that was.

So now they’re back and they’ve taken a different tack by emerging phoenix-like in the form of a website that I assume is aimed at grabbing a piece of the increasing Internet pie. Trouble is, they’ve got it wrong.

Yet again they’ve gone for they eye-candy look rather than trying to actually fashion a niche for themselves. They’ve gone for a website that has Flash all over it in ways that don’t immediately make sense. Check out the pick and mix and you find that you can click on some sweets once or twice (I’m not entirely sure which yet) and you get some put in a bag. It’s like a puzzle. I don’t want a website to be a puzzle, I want to press a button and buy something.

I might be being overly critical, but I just think that if you go down in flames like Woolworth did and you want to make a splash, you need to do something a bit better than a Flash carousel type thingy that makes you want to switch off Javascript pretty quickly.

I hope I’m wrong, but I can’t see the new Woolworth doing much to upset Amazon, CDWow and Play.com. It’s the same old stuff almost transplanted from the High Street and that didn’t work, why should this?