When the doors to the first Woolworths store opened in New York in 1879, it was the Victorian equivalent of the £1 shop, selling everything for just five cents.

MARTIN WILLIAMS and WILLIAM TINNING

When the doors to the first Woolworths store opened in New York in 1879, it was the Victorian equivalent of the £1 shop, selling everything for just five cents.

Now the troubled chain - due to celebrate its 100th anniversary of British trading next year - is going into administration with another familiar retailer MFI, after failing to sell its 800 outlets for as little as £1.

Woolies has become a stalwart of the high street and a British institution. Generations of children have wandered its tight aisles, and ogled at the pick 'n' mix counter, while parents have picked up school uniforms, and older siblings found cheap albums and singles.

The advertising slogans became part of British culture from "that's the wonder of Woolies" to "well worth it".

At Woolworth's store in Glasgow city centre last night, it was business as usual as Christmas shoppers took advantage of extended opening hours.

Trading was brisk with a host of "price drop" offers including several three-for-two promotions in a range of goods from household items to chocolates and DVDs.

Customers were united in their sadness and disappointment at its possible demise.

As she left the store, Christine Gray, 58, from Rutherglen, a hygiene manager said: "Generations of people grew up with Woolworths. It was always a place people went for a bargain. I would really miss it if it closed and I'm sure many other people would too."

Another customer, Catherine Blunt, 51, from Cardonald, Glasgow, who also works nearby, said: "The Woolworths name is iconic and is one many people are very fond of."

Katrina Lyden, 21, a sales ledger clerk, who lives and works in the city centre, said: "I shop in Woolies a lot. I feel quite sick and disgusted at the prospect that it could close. My job is also under threat so I know how the staff must be feeling."

Staff leaving the store after it closed last night were under strict orders not to comment to the media. One did say however, that she had been told to report for work as normal today.

Founded by Frank Winfield Woolworth, an anglophile American who claimed he could trace his family roots to Wooley in Cambridgeshire, Woolworths had 54 stores in the US by 1900. In 1909 he opened his first British outlet, in Liverpool, with everything priced at thruppence or sixpence.

"I believe that a good penny and sixpence store, run by a live Yankee, would be a sensation here," Woolworth wrote in his diary. His instincts were right.

The business plan was simple - buy from the best craftsmen, cut out the middlemen and keep the prices low.

Dedicated and determined, Woolworth would do virtually anything to keep prices down. Once he walked miles across the German countryside simply to find a craftsman who made Christmas decorations.

Within a generation there were nearly 500 stores in Britain, run by Woolworth's protege William Stephenson, a young freight clerk he met in a Staffordshire pottery.

Woolworths really took off in the mid-1920s, with a new shop opening as often as every 17 days. but after the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the company decided to float the British arm of Woolworths on the London Stock Exchange.

By the time Stephenson retired in 1948, he had built the British arm into a huge concern and becoming one of the country's richest men.

Woolworth's granddaughter, Barbara Hutton, injected some glamour into the Woolworths name, a "poor little rich girl" who lived a life that combined glamour, affluence and misery in almost equal measures. Her string of husbands included Cary Grant.

In the 21st century, the real wonder of Woolies has been that it survived so long.

It has battled stock shortages, faced an aborted bid attempt by retail billionaire Sir Philip Green, and failing to persuade a new generation of shoppers to visit its stores.

Woolworths

• The first Woolworths store opened in New York in 1879.

• The first in the UK opened in Church Street, Liverpool, on November 9, 1909. Within 20 years, the chain expanded to more than 400 stores.

• Its record label, Embassy, was the first to sell Stevie Wonder singles in the UK.

• Founder Frank Woolworth died in 1919, aged 66. His estate was worth £30m.

MFI

• It was founded as Mullard Furniture Industries in London by Noel Lister and Donald Searle in 1964. It took its name from the maiden name of Searle's wife.

• It was taken over in 1985 by supermarket chain Asda, for £563m, but sold two years later for £715m in a management buyout.

• In September 2006, MFI's stores were sold for £1 to private equity firm Merchant Equity Partners, a private equity firm founded by City banker Henry Jackson.