When his brother Frank sought work and fortune as an apprentice in Augsbury and Moore dry goods store, in Watertown, New York, Sum became eager to follow.

[4] With a loan from his former boss, William Moore, Frank opened a five-cent store in Utica, New York, on February 22, 1878.

Though it initially appeared to be successful, business soon dropped off and the store failed in early May 1878, after Frank earned enough to pay back his debt to William Moore.

Within days, Frank acted on a tip from a close friend and visited Lancaster, Pennsylvania, and quickly decided to re-locate there.

He opened his first successful "Woolworth's Great Five Cent Store" on June 21, 1879, on North Queen Street, using the same sign from Utica.

At the end of the first day in Lancaster, Frank counted his profit, and with renewed enthusiasm, he invited his brother, Sum, to join him.

Due to the rent dispute, Frank and Sum closed the Harrisburg store and relocated to York, Pennsylvania, in March 1880.

This became a Woolworth brothers' pattern going forward, so they could expand the merchandise sales area without the need to move their location.

Sum partnered with one of his long-time friends, Fred Kirby, in 1884, to open a store in Wilkes Barre, Pennsylvania, near Scranton.

Sum developed his stores with clean high-lustre wood floors, bright interiors, self-service display cases, mahogany counters, glass dividers and show cases, enticing window displays which changed regularly, and low prices for commonly sought-after merchandise.

Sum's hands-on approach, carefully selecting managers, resulted in a higher net profit per square foot, for all of his stores versus those of the other affiliates.

Seymour Knox, for instance, partnered with Earle Perry Charlton, who began their joint venture with a store in Fall River, Massachusetts.

Sum and Frank differentiated Woolworth's product range from competitors by buying directly from European factories.

They developed personal contacts with European factory owners on buying trips to Great Britain and Germany, starting in 1890.

Earle Perry Charlton realized, if he continued his operation in New England, he would be in direct competition with Sum and Frank Woolworth, Seymour Knox, and Fred Kirby.

The others, Sum Woolworth, Fred Kirby, Seymour Knox, Earle Charlton, and William Moore, became directors.

Fred was joined by three established men in the Woolworth operation, Byron Miller, Samuel Balfour and Charles Hubbard, as well as an Englishman with whom they had dealings, William Lawrence Stephenson.

Given wide leeway, the brand took hold rapidly through the UK, in spite of the breakout of war, growing to forty-four stores and exceeding £4 million in profits for 1914–1915.

Likewise, the Woolworth brothers began a significant operation in Germany by 1900, where products were collected and packed for shipping to New York City for re-distribution around the US.

When war broke out, and eventually transatlantic shipping ground to a halt, Frank Woolworth had US factories copy the best-selling products which had been imported from Europe.

These newly trained managers were dispersed across the entire company, maintaining and setting a style and tone for Woolworth stores worldwide.

[citation needed] Frank aggressively grew the chain from the start, yet he always had a paternal approach to his earliest stores, in the US and in England.

While Frank was outgoing and gregarious, openly flashing the brand, Sum worked one-on-one with people, improving the Woolworth store experience for customers.

The lower 28 floors are still owned by the Witkoff Group and Cammeby International, who plans to lease them as office space.

People often comment about the lunch counter, buying a large hamburger, an ice cream sundae or a milk shake (the type which is primarily ice cream blended with flavoring and a small amount of milk), and popping a balloon to find out the price of a banana split (a slip of paper with the price was inside the balloon).

He donated funds to help start the Women's Domestic Institute (WDI) in 1916, and open doors on a new building on September 29, 1921, at 1000 Wyoming Avenue, Scranton, Pennsylvania.

On March 1, 1933, during the movement to boycott Jewish businesses in Germany, Nazi troops sang in front of the Berlin Woolworth Company store.

The Woolworth Company took a $2 million financial hit to profits, yet the executives tried to stay optimistic that the situation would resolve itself.

As war ensued, the twist of fate proved that Woolworth stores were not destroyed by Hitler, but rather, by Allied bombing (US, UK and Canadian Air Forces).

Sum was named after a well-known Massachusetts politician and senator of the time, Charles Sumner, who was a leader of the antislavery forces in Massachusetts and a leader of the Radical Republicans in the United States Senate during the American Civil War, and worked to control the ex-Confederates so as to guarantee equal rights to the Freedmen.