on Briggate in Leeds (now occupied by House of Fraser), which it had occupied since 1913, and kept only its smaller single-level branch in the Merrion Centre. This was in an area of the city centre which had less pedestrian traffic, of shoppers who were generally on a lower budget. Woolworths did have several smaller outlets during the 1990s which sold music and confectionery. Smaller outlets with a similar format were also tried at the Sheffield Meadowhall Shopping Centre, but closed in 2003; the Manchester Music and Video store was superseded by a larger MVC store, owned by Woolworths Group. In the late 1990s, the management extended the Woolworths brand into other retail formats and alternative channels to accelerate growth by taking advantage of changing retail trends. Some larger-format stores were opened under the Big W brand, similar to Wal-Mart in the US. Although it was successful at the beginning, the format failed to catch on; the original plan had relied upon leveraging the involvement of other Kingfisher group retailers, but following the de-merger this was no longer possible. Following a period of losses, Woolworths confirmed in 2004 it would abandon the Big W concept. The group sold seven of the 21 Big W stores in 2005 to Tesco and Asda. The gross internal floor area of the remaining sites was reduced to an optimum trading size of around 40,000 to . Following this, they were rebranded as Woolworths Out of Town stores. Later years The newly independent Woolworths faced severe competitive and financial pressures. The market for physical copies of music, one of Woolworths' main money spinners, shrank in the early 21st century; specialist music chains such as Our Price collapsed. The major supermarket chains expanded into many of Woolworths' product areas, and the fast-expanding Wilkinson challenged it directly on the high street. Woolworths did not generally follow the trend started in the 1980s of opening stores at out-of-town relocations. One of its few out-of-town stores opened at Dudley's Merry Hill Shopping Centre in 1989, but this closed within a few years due to disappointing trade. In an attempt to raise the group's corporate profile under the chairmanship of Gerald Corbett, Woolworths sponsored a show garden at the RHS Chelsea Flower Show in 2004. Designed by a group of graduate students from Pickard School of Garden Design, the contemporary-formal style garden was awarded a silver medal. In the middle