F. W. Woolworth Company Co. had the first five-and-dime stores, which sold discounted general merchandise at fixed prices, usually five or ten cents, undercutting the prices of other local merchants. Woolworth, as the stores popularly became known, was one of the first American retailers to put merchandise out for the shopping public to handle and select without the assistance of a sales clerk. Earlier retailers had kept all merchandise behind a counter and customers presented the clerk with a list of items they wished to buy. After working in Augsbury and Moore dry goods store in Watertown, New York, Frank Winfield Woolworth obtained credit
Frank Winfield Woolworth after his mother's death that Woolworth's trademark concept of the 5-and-10 Cent store, or the "Five-and-Dime," was developed. Accounts on the conception of the five-and-dime differ. Scholar Gail Fenske suggests that Woolworth had heard of a "five-cent counter craze" while questioning his own sales ability at his first job. Jean Maddern Pitrone suggests the idea was conceived after a travelling salesman told Woolworth of stores with the five-cent counter concept in Michigan. Plunkett-Powell suggests the concept was overheard by Woolworth during a discussion between William Moore and a young man who had opened his own cut-rate goods store. Regardless of