F. W. Woolworth Company

Frank Winfield Woolworth invented modern retail. His 'five-and-dime' stores were the first to put merchandise on open display where customers could touch it, the first to use fixed prices instead of haggling, and the first to prove that selling cheap goods in high volume could build an empire. The Woolworth Building in Manhattan was the tallest building in the world when it opened in 1913.

Woolworth's lunch counters also became a flashpoint for the Civil Rights Movement. The 1960 Greensboro sit-in, where four Black college students sat at a whites-only Woolworth's counter and refused to leave, became one of the defining moments of the movement.

By the 1990s, the five-and-dime concept had been eaten from below by dollar stores and from above by big-box retailers like Walmart and Target. The Woolworth's brand no longer meant anything specific. The parent company renamed itself Venator Group (later Foot Locker) and closed the last 400 Woolworth's stores in 1997. A 118-year-old American institution, gone because it couldn't answer the question: why would anyone shop here?