John Lewis, Senior and Junior: A Contrast in Pathways Up the Retailing Ladder

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Commerce & Business, Local history, Retailing history

The path taken by John Lewis in scaling the heights of retail commerce was typical of many embryonic and aspiring owner-drapers in mid-Victorian Britain. Somerset born and raised, Lewis started his first modest shop in Nº132 (later re-numbered) Oxford Street, London, in 1864 (taking the sum of 16s & 4d on opening day). His first twenty years in business for himself were far from glamorous, a period dominated by hard and dreary ‘yakka’ and slow piecemeal accumulation and consolidation.

The tortoise approach – slow and steady
Lewis took a conservative, uncomplicated (“keep it simple”) approach to retailing and only slowly moved his lines from silks, woollens and cotton fabrics to dress fabrics and clothing and later to furnishing fabrics and household supplies like China and ironmongery (but never food!). His philosophy was sell cheap and no ads (for nearly a century the John Lewis company continued a practice of minimal advertising!)✱. Unsurprisingly for a man described as “a Victorian curmudgeon” [‘John Lewis (1836-1928)’, Geoffrey Tweedale, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, 06-Jan-2011, www.oxfordnb.com], his management style was rigidly autocratic, he often had abysmally poor relations with his staff and was prone to effecting arbitrary and sometimes wholesale dismissals. In 1920 Lewis’ “pig-headedness” and anti-union stance triggered deleterious industrial conflict…in 1920 the unaddressed grievances of Lewis’ shop-girls led to a strike by 400 staff. Lewis simply sacked the strikers and replaced them, but his arbitrary action brought him discredit and caused commercial ruptures adversely affected the company’s competitiveness vis-à-vis its retailing rivals in the long-term. ‘How John Lewis was the original store wars: As the retail empire celebrates 150 years, we tell its fascinating story’, (Brian Viner), The Daily Mail (UK),, 04-Jul-2014, www.dailymail.co.uk]

ef=”http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-1.jpg”> Flagship store 1939 (Source: John Lewis Memory)[/cap
Lewis adopted an habitually “penny-pinching” stance when it came to running the store’s finances. In this he was the diametrically opposite of his Selfridges contemporary, the ostentatious, big spending, big advertising Harry Gordon Selfridge. In the eyes of Lewis, Selfridge must have seemed absolutely criminally profligate! Nonetheless Lewis did earn “brownie points” with London consumers for his straight dealing and commitment to the purveyance of quality goods, and profits grew accordingly. Sales for the ‘John Lewis’ stores rose from an underwhelming £25,000 in 1870 to a commendable £921,000 in 1921.

http://www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/11/image-2.jpg”> Peter Jones[/caption
Another instance of Lewis’s circumspect approach was his reluctance to expand the business. It was not until 1906 that he made a move in this direction, purchasing the ailing Peter Jones store in Chelsea after the death of the store’s original Welsh owner✧. During his long lifetime John Lewis made no further expansionary attempts. The company during this period was clearly hamstrung by a lack of dynamic vision under its founder – losing vital retail ground to the likes of Whiteleys and Owen Owen [Tweedale, loc.cit.].

Father v son
Lewis’s innate caution also showed itself in his hesitancy in passing even a portion of control of the firm over to his sons, especially his eldest son John Spedan Lewis. When Lewis’s sons came of age, he gave them a limited role only…Spedan (as he was universally called) was put in charge of the newly acquired Peter Jones store (presumably to keep him from interfering with the central operation of the business). Spedan increasingly clashed with Lewis Senior over their fundamentally different approaches to business, with Spedan in charge of Peter Jones and JL Senior holding sway in Oxford Street HQs, relations between father and son deteriorated alarmingly (characterised in some quarters as equating to intra-family “store wars”) [Viner, loc.cit].

After the founder’s death in 1928 Spedan was free to fully implement his more progressive management ideas – in the area of staff relations these were often light years away from his father’s outmoded views and intransigent bellicosity…once at the helm Lewis Junior started by cutting working hours and introduced tea-breaks for the staff…Spedan envisaged further, more radical, plans for modernising ‘John Lewis’ and propelling it forward in the Thirties.

Under Spedan’s watch – JLP up and away!
Spedan wasted no time in taking ‘John Lewis’ in a very different direction to his late father’s ultra-cautious, steady-as-it-goes approach. In 1929 he reformed the enterprise into a public limited company, John Lewis Partners (JLP). Staff were rebranded ‘partners’ and made shareholders in the firm. Spedan diversified and pursued an expansionary route that Lewis Senior had so long doggedly eschewed. Smaller, less profitable chains were acquired – from 1933 on Spedan widened the John Lewis Partnership dramatically, adding purchased stores for the first time outside of London – Nottingham, Weston Super-Mare, Portsmouth and Tyrrel, Southampton, etc. [‘The 1930’s; a period of growth’, (Johnathan Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]. One of JL Junior’s ideas was to create a chain of John Lewis hotels, and to supply these hotels he bought a chain of grocery shops, known as Waitrose, in the Thirties. Waitrose proved a spectacularly profitable acquisition for John Lewis’⊛. As of 2016 there were some 353 Waitrose supermarkets across the UK, collectively worth more than £1B (one of only five such successful food and drink brands in Britain) [‘Waitrose’, Wikipedia]http://en.m.wikipedia.org.

In the Forties John S Lewis bought up some of the failing Selfridge business concerns after the former high-flying company plummeted and Harry Selfridge was forced out to pasture and into retirement. Other (overseas) business moves into South African draperies however turned out to be unsuccessful ventures [‘John Lewis’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

▼ Spedan Lewis

Although Spedan was less autocratic, and certainly less confrontational✣, than his father, he was no democrat when it came to running the John Lewis business empire. Some observers (including insiders), recognising an inherited family trait, saw Lewis Junior as a “my way or the highway” type of business leader. Recollections of some ex-staff and associates point at a Spedan inclination to public losses of temper and the arbitrary and unfair treatment of staff on occasions, with a suggestion of a peculiar bias against staff (including managers) with ginger hair [‘Memories of Spedan – not all sweetness and light’, (Margaret Cole), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk].

Today JLP remains an employee-owned British company (consistent with the “worker-cooperative” entity (the ‘Partnership’) as initiated by Spedan Lewis in 1929). According to the Sunday Times it is the third largest private UK company by sales – £3.78B revenue in 2017 [“The Sunday Times HSBC Top Track 100 league” (2016)]. As a retail operator JLP maintain its traditional market position as a chain of high-end✫ department stores⊡, competing with its historic, equally upscale rivals in the merchandising field, Harrods and Selfridges.

FN: the corporate colours of retailing
John Lewis’s store colours have traditionally been green and white – supposedly because Spedan Lewis wrote his memos exclusively in green ink (the auditor’s colour!) on white paper [Tweedale, loc.cit.]. Interestingly, green seems to be the preferred colour of successful London-based retailers…Selfridges’ salient business colour is also green, and both Harrod’s and Marks and Spencer’s traditional hues are green and gold.

2013: John Lewis presence in Westfield’s Shepherds Bush mall ∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸∸
✱ the John Lewis motto (dating from 1925) characteristically is “never knowingly undersold”
✧ the sale was the stuff of legend in London retailing – Lewis reportedly walked the distance from Oxford Street to the Sloane Square, Chelsea, Jones premises, with bank notes in his pocket to the value of £20,000 to complete the purchase in person. Today, Peter Jones is the ‘posher’ sibling of the John Lewis store
⊛ Waitrose is an upmarket grocer in line with the general emphasis of John Lewis merchandising
✣ JL Senior’s quarrelsome, confrontational nature was often fraught with consequences – a protracted turn-of-the-century legal dispute with Lord Howard, Baron de Walden, saw Lewis being sentenced to three weeks in gaol in 1903 for contempt of court [‘How John Lewis ended up in prison. A new century same old Mr Lewis’, (J Blanchford), (‘John Lewis Memory Store’), www.johnlewismemorystore.org.uk]
✫ a monumental departure from the early days of JL Senior’s “sell cheap” strategy
⊡ currently around 30 JL stores in England, Scotland and Wales and concessions in the Republic of Ireland and Australia

The Selfridges Story: The Making and Unmaking of Harry (or Several Lessons in Cultivating Customer Satisfaction)

Posted on by E Curb Nottus
Biographical, Built Environment, Commerce & Business, Local history, Retailing history, Travel

“People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.”
~ HG Selfridge

⊹⊹⊹ ⊹⊹⊹ ⊹⊹⊹

Before I ever visited the UK I wasn’t at all familiar with Selfridges. I knew about Knightsbridge and Harrods and its preciously preserved pedigree all right…we’ve done that! My first time in London I was on a bus travelling (make that crawling) down Oxford Street heading towards the West End when I was enlightened as to the existence of the second-best known upmarket London department store. As the bus idled stationary I spotted a sign in front of a building that said ‘Selfridges’, my first thought, I remember, was “strange name!”…but when I think about it now I vaguely recall that I had previously heard the name Selfridges, but without inquiring further at the time I sort of formed the literal impression that it was a store as the name sounded that “sold fridges”, ie, a purveyor of domestic white goods! So when I did eventually get my beak inside the store’s doors at 400 Oxford Street I was surprised to see lines and lines of (pricey) fashion wear, shoes, accessories, skin care products, bags and more – but not one refrigerator in sight! (in its time it has apparently sold most everything!)

Even without visiting Selfridges’ flagship Oxford Street store, you may well be aware of it or of its US-born founder Harry Gordon Selfridge thanks to the recent ITV television series Mr Selfridge (first aired in 2013). The series was a period drama about the flamboyant, visionary retailer and the interactions that take place around him in his eponymous London department store✱.

A Marshall Field blueprint for London
Wisconsin-born Harry Gordon Selfridge initially earned his business ‘spurs’ working for Chicago department store Marshall Field & Company (right), this segued into him purchasing his own department store in Chicago. In hardly any time at all the mercurial Selfridge abruptly re-sold the business, making a quick profit and retired to play golf. In 1906 while holidaying in London, Selfridge sensed a new retail opening for his entrepreneurial talents in the British capital. For £400,000 he purchased land and surrounds for a novel custom-built, mega-department store in the then unfashionable, western end of Oxford Street [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org].

“The American Invasion of London”
The London press was not initially warm to the notion of the American’s incursion into the world of London commerce. The City’s daily and drapery trade press described it as an “American Invasion of London” [Lawrence]. Selfridge’s loud in tone and bombastic approach to selling the project didn’t help in endearing him to the newspapers (described in some publications as being “aggressively big in scale”). Selfridge’s efforts to make the store a reality were driven by an unwavering vision: creating a “monumental retail emporium” was in his eyes the key to elevating “the business of a merchant to the Dignity of Science” (as he grandiosely put it). Selfridge believed to achieve that, he had to construct a gigantic “technologically advanced department store”, hence the massive amount of money, time and effort he put into the project [LAWRENCE, J. (1990). ‘Steel Frame Architecture versus the London Building Regulations: Selfridges, the Ritz, and American Technology’. Construction History, 6, 23-46. Retrieved from http://www.jstor.org/stable/41613676].

A ground-breaking, landmark modern steel-framed building
Construction of the Selfridge store was something of an architectural coup in itself. It won praise in its day from British building journals for its innovative construction methods…built with steel frames and reinforced concrete allowing for much narrower than usual walls, the frames permitted a far greater window area, so very large plate-glass windows could be installed (12 of which were the largest sheets of plate-glass then in the world!) – making for much more interior natural light and brightness (designed by famed US architect Daniel Burnham and associates). Originally comprising a 250′ x 175′ site, Selfridge’s had nine Otis passenger and two service lifts and six staircases. 100 separate departments were spread out over eight floors. While the physical construction of the Oxford Street store took only 12 months, Selfridge had first to overcome London City Council’s raft of objections (unprecedented size of the commercial structure, fire danger, etc). Selfridge and his engineers’ lobbying of the LCC Committee eventually resulted in the passing of two local building acts – LCC (General Powers) Acts of 1908 and 1909 – necessary for the Oxford Street project to be completed [Lawrence, ibid.]☯.

Rigid building regulations weren’t Selfridge’s only impediment to making his dream store a reality. Half-way through the project funding became a pressing issue when his partner and main backer Sam Waring, frustrated by Harry’s “grandiose and reckless approach” to the venture (Selfridge had grievously underestimated the complications of the project), withdrew his financial backing. The economic downturn in London (and in the US) at the time made alternative sources of funding a very grim prospect, and disaster was only narrowly avoided when a new backer, millionaire tea tycoon John Musker stepped in to rescue Selfridge [Gayle Soucek, Mr Selfridge in Chicago: Marshall Field’s, the Windy City and the Making of a Merchant Prince, (2015)]. After the big opening Selfridge remembered to make sure the store’s product lines included everything to do with tea-making (teapots, cups and saucers, sugar bowls, etc) [‘Selfridges: 7 things you (probably) didn’t know about the department store’, (History Extra), www.historyextra.com].

Selfridge, customer-centred strategies ahead of the curve
Harry’s approach to retailing was characteristically innovative on many fronts. Selfridge placed tremendous faith in advertising, the 1909 campaign leading up to the store’s opening cost a reported $500,000 in 1909 money [‘Selfridge Dies: Ripon Lad Who Jolted Empire’, The Milwaukee Sentinel, 9-May-1947 (online fiche)] (Britain’s biggest ever ad bill to that point) and he used it imaginatively together with ingenious publicity campaigns. Selfridge was the first retailer to make popular the idea of “shopping for pleasure”, rather than it being solely a functional task undertaken for necessity (as people conceived of it prior to Harry’s advent). In-store activities and arrangements often were original and novel (eg, displaying the monoplane used by aviator Louis Blériot in the first cross-English Channel flight at Selfridge’s (1909)✜). Another interest-generating feature in the store was Logie Baird’s television prototype shown on display in 1925.

Those specially designed wide windows were put to optimal use, Selfridge was the first to utilise window dressing where he could show off the latest fashions and utensils in open display [‘Selfridges 7 things’, loc.cit.]. The staff at Selfridge’s Oxford Street store (initially comprising 1,400 employees) were instructed to assist customers in their purchases, not to pester or use any “hard-sell” tactics on them⊟. Harry’s philosophy was “first get them in, then to keep them there. Thereafter they would buy” (Woodhead). One of Selfridge’s more forward-thinking moves was to locate the goods where they were visible and accessible to customers all around the store’s interior (a practice he devised while at Marshall Field’s in Chicago), rather than hiding them away from sight under counters (as had been the practice in most retail stores hitherto). He also introduced the concept of the “bargain basement” to retailing, a section where shoppers could find regularly discounted commodities [‘Innovation Lessons From The World’s First Customer Experience Pioneer — Infograph’, (Blake Morgan), Forbes Magazine, 26-Jun-2017, www.forbes.com ; Lindy Woodhead, Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge, (2012)].

A visceral, holistic experience
Selfridge’s vision was to make the department store more than just a shop where you went to buy goods, he continued to introduce new features to Selfridges…elegant (moderately priced) restaurants, a library, reading and writing rooms and special reception rooms for French, American and ‘Colonial’ clientele. There were cookery demonstrations in the kitchenware section. All this marked a radical departure from the practices of other department stores which employed floorwalkers to ‘shoo’ people out of the store who were just hanging around and not actively engaged in buying an item! Even the store’s roof was put to productive if curious usage (a shooting range for an all-girl gun club as well as an ice rink✧) [Lawrence, loc.cit.].

The female shopper as an identified demographic
Selfridge saw the role of the department store in macrocosmic terms – “the store should be a social centre, not merely a place for shopping”. Unlike the conservative establishment of the day and much of the mainstream, Selfridge endorsed the Suffragette Movement…the new store was (in part) “dedicated to woman’s service”. In a 1913 advertisement Selfridge described the store thus: Selfridge and Co: The Modern Woman’s Club-Store” [‘Suffrage Stories/Campaigning for the Vote: Selfridge’s and Suffragettes’, Woman and her Sphere, (Elizabeth Crawford), 16-May-2013, www.womanandhersphere.com; ‘Selfridge Lovers: The Secret behind our house’, www.selfridge.com]. Astute businessman that he was, Harry popularised shopping as a leisure activity specifically for women…to make it a more welcoming and conducive place for them to spend time (and money!), he displayed freshly scented floral arrangements and had open vistas in the store, he employed musicians to perform and added beauty and hair salons (Paris-inspired) and art galleries. And he introduced public restrooms for women to the store (the first time ever done!)❅
[Forbes, loc.cit.].

The H.G.S. leadership style
As retail magnate go, Selfridge went against the grain for his day by not being an authoritarian business leader. He was temperamentally inclined towards fairness with regard to remuneration, increasing the wages of his staff, elevating them above “wage slavery”, treating them as employees as opposed to ‘servants’ (cf. Harrods) [ibid.]…not to overstate it, Selfridges shop floor staff were still exposed to long, long hours of drudgery but they were paid a livable wage for their arduous labours. A sample of the quotes attributed to Selfridge reflect his anti-dictatorship approach to business and interpersonal relations: “The boss drives his men, the leader coaches them” ; “The boss depends on authority, the leader on good will” ; “The boss says ‘I’, the leader says ‘We'” ; “The boss inspires fear, the leader inspires enthusiasm” ; “The boss fixes the blame for the breakdown, the leader fixes the breakdown” ; etc.✥ [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.]

Tower folly
Selfridge’s thrived, prospered and grew after the Great War (the store size doubled). Things didn’t always go the Wisconsin-born retail magnate’s way however…a couple of commercial reversals suffered by Harry during the decade concerned his plans for erecting a massive tower from the building which was rejected by the LCC Committee because of excessive height, and possibly also because it would have vied with the iconic St Paul’s Cathedral for attention (a fortunate outcome perhaps as the model drawings for the tower suggest the result would have been an incongruous coupling of architectural forms and a hideous eyesore!) [Lawrence, op.cit.]. The other setback was Selfridge’s proposal for a tunnel between the store and the nearest tube station, Bond Street, the plan ultimately got kiboshed!

Harry on the downslide
By the late Twenties Selfridge & Co was at the top of its game, the name was synonym with quality merchandise and Selfridge took its place as a stellar institution on the London commercial scene. Some time after the onset of the Great Depression things started to turn badly pear-shaped for Selfridge, as for businessmen as a whole. Harry Selfridge contributed to his own decline however by persisting in his flamboyantly extravagant spending. He squandered money on his womanising ways for which he earned a certain notoriety, for instance, $4M was wasted on his dalliances and affairs such as with the Dolly Sisters (Hungarian jazz dancers) – a part of his story that the TV series was quick to focus on) [Forbes, loc.cit.. By 1940 the company owed £250,000 in taxes and Selfridge was deep in debt to the bank, forcing him to sell out and retire from the business (retaining a modest annual consultancy stipend) [‘Harry Gordon Selfridge’, Wikipedia, op.cit.; Milwaukee Sentinel, op.cit]

Selfridges’ Birmingham Bullring store ▼Selfridges post H.G.S.
Selfridge & Co’s reversal of fortunes signalled a move from its circling competitors…rival department chain John Lewis & Partners acquired some of Selfridges’ provincial stores in the Forties, which was a preliminary move to John Lewis’ eventual takeover of the flagship Oxford Street store (1951). In turn John Lewis was itself acquired by the Sears Group in 1965. Its current owners, the Anglo-Canadian Galen Weston company bought Selfridges in 2003 for a reported £598M. Today the store name ‘Selfridges’ survives on the Oxford Street building, and in the three other regional branches in the counties (Trafford Centre and Exchange Square, both in Manchester, and the Bullring in Birmingham).

FN: Harry Selfridge from when he first arrived was perceived widely as a Trans-Atlantic “blow-in”, splashing his (and his wife’s) money around, vociferously determined to show the established home-grown retailers what a ‘superior’ type of modern department store looked like. Selfridge displayed a talent for polarising opinion…to his dazzled admirers he was “the Earl of Oxford Street”, the flashy Midwest American merchant was “as much a part of the sights as Big Ben” (as one columnist waxed lyrically), but to his detractors (including many of his competitors and much of the London press) he was merely a “vulgar American tradesman” or worse [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit ; Woodhead, op.cit.].

PostScript: ‘Selfridges gets Sixties hip
In 1966, Selfridges, by now under Sears Holdings boss Charles Clore, recognised the youth market with a separate outlet for young women, Miss Selfridge (forming a link back to Harry Selfridge’s traditional focus on female customers). The new store in Duke Street signalled Selfridges’ wholesale embrace of the Sixties’ fashion revolution. Miss Selfridge used mannequins based on the straight line form of 1960s iconic model Twiggy and sold the latest in Mary Quant and Pierre Cardin fashions. In the early 2000s Miss Selfridge was acquired by the Arcadia Group [‘Selfridges 7 things’, op.cit.].

“The Queen of Time” AKA Ship of Commerce Statue ▼
⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎⁎

✱ described as “Downton Abbey with tills” [” ‘Mr Selfridge’: It’s ‘Downton Abbey’ with tills…”, The Telegraph, (Daphne Lockyer), 15-Dec-2012, www.telegraph.co.uk]
☯ the impressive Selfridge facade, personifying power and permanence, was later complimented by the addition of a decorative Art-Deco motif – the ‘Queen of Time riding her Ship of Commerce’ (clock-statue by Gilbert Bayes)
✜ around 12,000 visited the store to view the displayed history making French monoplane…no doubt plenty of these visitors also made spontaneous purchases while they were in Selfridge’s premises [Forbes, op.cit.]
⊟ Selfridge possibly was quite consciously also trying to make his front-line staff as unlike Harrods’ staff – who had a reputation for ‘snootiness’ and stiff formality – as he could! [Milwaukee Sentinel, loc.cit]
✧ recently the roof was again used in idiosyncratic fashion, by being turned into a “boat lake” and a “putt-putt” mini-golf course for customers
❅ in return, when protesting suffragettes smashed shops windows in Oxford Street, Selfridge’s was one of the few left unscathed
✥ other (very famous) attributed ‘Selfridgeisms’ are “the customer is always right” and “only xx shopping days till Christmas”

John Wanamaker, Evangelical Retailer and Innovator

Posted on by funambulator@live.com
Biographical, Regional History, Retailing history

Wanamaker’s department stores were an innovative 19th century prototype of American retail enterprise best remembered today for the drive and vigour of its founder in establishing the company regionally on the Atlantic Seaboard. John Wanamaker’s humble origins in the retail trade began with the small menswear store known as “Oak Hall” (Philadelphia) he started up in partnership with his brother-in-law in the early days of the American Civil War.

From the get-go Wanamaker exhibited a flair for innovation, demonstrating an aptitude for thinking outside the box in retailing. Wanamaker introduced concepts in his business that were quite radical in retailing of the day. One of the earliest, which seems self-evident to us today, was to establish the principle of price-setting. Before Wanamaker started putting price tags on his goods, the practice in shops was that the price of an item would be determined by haggling between the customer of the salesperson. Wanamaker, as a devout Christian imbued with the Protestant work ethic, espoused the principle of price equality…as he liked to say (repeatedly), “if everyone was equal before God, then everyone should be equal before price”✱[1]. Wanamaker also allowed customers the option of returning the goods (within a specified time period) and receiving a refund, a practice that was unusual in retailing at that time.

Truth (and volume) in advertising
From the time he was a teenager Wanamaker developed an appreciation of the value of publicity. One of his early publicity stunts for the store was to release 20 foot balloons and reward those who retrieved them with a free suit from Wanamaker’s. From as early as the 1860s the Philadelphia merchant relied on advertising to propel his business forward. Wanamaker took out large size ads in newspapers, which proved expensive, but nonetheless generated a large volume of sales. During the War between the States the store was kept afloat by being able to supply Union Army officers’ uniforms to the Northern side. By 1909 the retailer was placing ads daily in the press. Wanamaker assiduously built consumer trust…when he placed retail ads offering low prices for wares, he kept his word to the public[2].

Wanamaker usually didn’t miss a business opportunity when it came along. In 1876 he purchased Pennsylvania Railroad property and turned it into what would become Wanamaker’s flagship store, named the Grand Depot. Located on the corner of 13th and Market Streets, Philadelphia, Wanamaker promoted it as a “New Kind of Store”, adding women’s clothing and dry goods to the existence outlet for menswear, arguably making it one of if not the world’s first department store. The original building (architect: Daniel Burnham) boosted an exotic Moorish-style facade, the building that he erected much later on the same site had a classic Florentine facade.

Other Wanamaker retail innovations
The Pennsylvanian merchant was ahead of the curve in many ways, pioneering marketing strategies as well as being an early proponent of advertising. Other firsts for the Wanamaker stores included:

◗ the first department store to include a restaurant inside its complex
◗ the first department store with electrical illumination
◗ the first department store to have telephone communications
◗ the first department store to use pneumatic tube transit (to internally move cash and documents around the store)
◗ the first department store to have an elevator
◗ the first department store to have a wireless station
◗ the first department store to engage buyers to travel to Europe to acquire the latest fashions[3]

Wanamaker also pioneered a series of individual benefits for his staff members – free medical care, profit-sharing, pensions (all ahead of his competitors). Wanamaker implemented measures for staff training that were in advance of their time…establishing an in-house college, the Wanamaker Commercial Institute, providing his workers with skills and tuition in bookkeeping, finance, English and maths◘. He also initiated summer camps for young men and women on the payroll – in keeping with Wanamaker’s characteristic intertwining of religion and business, this was to equip them with moral instruction and development[4].

Wanamaker’s continued to grow into a small chain of stores…by the early 20th century Wanamaker had 16 department stores operating, mainly regionally, but the network included a showcase store in New York City (1896), between East 9th and 10th streets (in the ‘NoHo’ neighbourhood of Manhattan). Later Wanamaker built a second building opposite and connected them via an overhead walkway he called the “Bridge of Progress”.

Grand Depot mega-store
Wanamaker’s most ambitious store project was a massive transformation of the Philly retail store in 1910. The store was radically re-shaped in the form of a wheel with a 90 foot circular counter and 129 smaller sales counters installed in concentric circles. Wanamaker claimed that he had created “the largest space devoted to retail selling on a single floor”[5]. And, to give his new City Center flagship store a touch of imperial grandeur, the store contained a “Grand Court”, to which he added a Grand Court organ and a large bronze eagle⊙ (both of which had featured in the 1904 St Louis World’s Fair).

Wanamaker died in 1922 and his successor (his second son) in 1928, but the business continue to thrive and expand until the 1960s and 1970s. Increasingly though Wanamaker as a regional player wasn’t able to match it with national retail chains. Even in Philadelphia it was losing its market share to Bloomingdale’s and Macy’s. In 1978 Wanamaker’s was sold to California’s Carter Hawley Hale Stores, which tried to revive its fortunes but failed. Still trading as Wanamaker’s, it was then on-sold to Alfred Taubman’s Woodward and Lothrop. Under Woodward and Lothrop it again declined, then downsized to five stores, and eventually went into bankruptcy. In 1995 they were further sold to retail giant Macy’s, bringing to a close 133 years of Wanamaker’s retail history[7]. Despite the sense of inevitability, for many Philadelphians, the end of Wanamaker’s was a heartfelt moment, the loss of “a unique public institution and a powerful symbol of Philadelphia’s commercial viability”[8].

PostScript: Wanamaker’s diversified interests
Wanamaker at one point founded a bank (First Penny Savings Bank) to encourage Americans to embrace thrift. He also established a trades school in Elwyn, Pa. Between his business activities Wanamaker found time for a (four-year) stint as a civil servant…President Benjamin Harrison appointed him Postmaster-General in 1889. Wanamaker initiated some reforms (eg, brought in parcel post, erected a pneumatic tube system to US post offices), but his term was not without controversy (mass sacking of 30,000 postal workers, accusations of having ‘purchased’ the post of PMG).

—————————————————————–

✱ Wanamaker conceivably got the idea of fixed prices from the English Quakers, “fixed prices made everyone equal in the eyes of God”, Mary Pilon, The Monopolists, (2015). As befits someone with a bent for religious proselytising, Wanamaker had quite a penchant for pet mottos and maxims in business
◘ not as altruistic as it first sounds, there was a strong element of self-interest on Wanamaker’s part, the business ‘titan’ had an abhorrence of the labour movement and his generosity was insurance against the prospect of his workforce ever becoming unionised (Hingson)
⊙ Wanamaker’s Eagle became such an institution that Philadelphians would conveniently use it as a meet-up point when coming to the city (‘Wanamaker Organ’)

Source: Smithsonian (Postal Museum)


⌖ ⌖⌖⌖⌖⌖

[1] ‘John Wanamaker, Innovator’, (Who Made America?), www.pbs.org
[2] ‘Wanamaker, John, (1838-1922), Ad Age, 15-Sep-2003, www.adage.com
[3] ‘Wanamaker’s’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.Wikipedia.org; ‘Facts and Figures about the Wanamaker Organ’, www.wanamakerorgan.com
[4] ‘Thirteen Things You Might Not Know About John Wanamaker’, (Sandy Hingson), Philadelphia Magazine, 11-Jul-2016, www.phillymag.com
[5] ‘John Wanamaker A retailing innovator’, The Philly Inquirer, 22-June-1995, (Andrew Maykuth Online), www Maykuth.com; ‘Who Made America?’, loc.cit.
[6] ‘John Wanamaker’, Wikipedia,http://en.m.Wikipedia.org
[7] ‘Wanamaker’s’, Wikipedia, op.cit.
[8] Sarah Malino, review of Herbert Ershkowitz’s John Wanamaker: Philadelphia Merchant, (Pennsylvania Magazine of History and Biography, Vol.125, No 1/2, Jan-Apr 2001)

Launder and Gilliat: Prolific and Tradesman like Collaborators of British Cinema

Posted on by Sloane Snodgrasse
Biographical, Cinema

Frank Launder and Sidney Gilliat were two English film-makers who maintained a steadily consistent presence in the British cinema between the 1930s and the 1970s. Launder and Gilliat’s creative film roles, whether as writers, directors or producers (or as all three), contributed to over 100 British films in that era, including nearly 40 together as co-writers and producers.

The two co-wrote The Lady Vanishes, a 1938 mystery which was a breakthrough feature for Alfred Hitchcock❈. Interestingly Launder and Gilliat (hereafter L & G) had their (separate) starts in the film business composing inter-titles (title cards) for silent movies in the late 1920s, the same industry beginnings undertaken by Hitchcock several years earlier. L & G combined their talents behind-the-camera together for the first time from the mid 1930s. The L & G partnership had a flexibility and a particular pattern to it … invariably they would jointly produce films and/or also co-write screenplays (although on other occasions either man would co-write films with various other collaborating screenwriters). But almost with very few exceptions one or the other would direct a specific film singly – this was done apparently to avoid confusing the actors[1].

A versatile¤ and fecund partnership
As well as being prolific contributors to the creation of British films for such a long period, L & G’s film output spanned a range of genres … from thrillers and ‘whodunits’ like Green for Danger (1956) and Secret State (1950) to WWII social-realism films such as Waterloo Road (1944) and Millions Like Us (1943) to romance/adventures like The Blue Lamp (1949) to historical dramas such as Captain Boycott (1947) to farces like The Green Man (1956) and light comedies such as The Happiest Days of Your Life (1950), a precursor to a popular series of movies set in a girls’ boarding school immobilised by riotous juvenile anarchy – starting with The Belles of St Trinian’s (1954) which spawned a string of increasingly predictable sequels.

“Journeymen auteurs?”
The Times of London described the Gilliat/Launder team as “one of the most sparkling writing, directing and producing partnerships in postwar British cinema”[2]. Notwithstanding such praise, L & G’s body of work has tended to be undervalued by the bulk of film critics … at times eliciting back-handed appraisals from critics such as “toilers in the British comic tradition”; (their films at best exhibiting) “unfailing good humour and the occasional brainy prankishness”[3]. Certainly, technical innovation and self-conscious artiness was not Gilliat and Launder’s style, but they never managed to garner anything remotely like the prestige or critical approval that was lavished on other contemporary British film-makers, eg, Powell and Pressburger, Carol Reed or the Boulting brothers. Bruce Babington has attributed this in part to L & G’s ‘reticence’ as film-makers, the way that they declined to project themselves forward and intervene in controversies and debates of the day, unlike say, their contemporaries the Boultings[4].

Enlistment in the production of propaganda vehicles
So closely did the personal film-making styles and interests of the two collaborators align, many people found it hard to distinguish between a Launder-directed picture and one directed by Gilliat … most L & G films tended to resemble the fruits of their combined efforts. Or as Adair and Roddick put it, “it would take a lynx-eyed buff to be able to distinguish one from the other”[5].

The war-time pictures, Millions Like Us and Two Thousand Women can be identified as reflecting in particular Frank Launder’s preoccupation with the portrayal of strong, defiantly independent women[6]. These films were commissioned by the UK Ministry of Information to counter the prevailing low recruitment and morale of women in war-time factory work. Millions Like Us, as Judy Suh has noted, conveyed the “double valence of women as productive workers and domestic symbols of national unity”. L & G’s social-realist films, though propagandist in purpose, posed questions of gender and class whilst depicting the routine of ordinary people at work. The necessities of war-time brought out the conflicting roles and identities of women in such an out-of-the ordinary circumstance, as well as the existence of crossings of class boundaries[7].

/www.7dayadventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image-5.jpg”> Hockey stick-wielding private schoolgirl anarchists

After[/caption]After the war, witty and farcical, albeit slight, comedies were their forte (with the occasional thriller thrown in). Like other high-profile international film-makers L & G had their favourite performers that they liked to work with. L & G got the best performances out of British actors like Alastair Sim, Margaret Rutherford, Joyce Grenfell, Rex Harrison and George Cole. Of these luminaries it was Alastair Sim whose star shined most brightly under the direction of L & G. Sim appeared in at least ten L & G movies and his deliciously roguish star turns as a middle class word-spinning con-man were pure gold. George Cole, who also had a regular gig in the St Trinian’s cycle as the ultra dodgy spiv Flash Harry◘, described working with Gilliat and Launder (and Sim) … to Cole (later himself to find TV fame as consummate, malapropistic con-man ‘Arfur’ Daley in Minder) their films meant:

“Good scripts but terrible money. If Alastair was in the film it was even worse because he got most of it. But they were wonderful people to work with”[8].

In the 1940s Launder and Gilliat formed their own production company, aptly named Individual Pictures, at this time they were contractually engaged by Gainsborough Pictures … in 1958 the partners took charge of the production side of the struggling independent studio British Lion. By the 1960s both the quality and quantity of Gilliat/Launder productions had receded. In 1980 Launder went once more to the St Trinian’s well❃ with yet another sequel, Wildcats of St Trinian’s … unwisely so as the novelty of L & G’s feature films based on Ronald Searle’s charming cartoons of feral schoolgirls had long since lost their appeal.

PostScript: The Charters and Caldicott characters trope – antiquated, old school Englishness
L & G wrote into The Lady Vanishes two minor characters that were to become iconic, background characters in British cinema. Played by actors Basil Radford and Naughton Wayne, the two incidental supporting figures are singleminded cricket enthusiasts (“cricket tragics” as one recent Australian PM was dubbed) trying to hurry back to England to see the last days of the Manchester test match. The popularity of the characters saw them reappear in other L & G movies (including Night Train to Munich, Millions Like Us and in the 1979 remake of The Lady Vanishes), and in several other non-L & G films, eg, the Boxs’ A Girl in a Million and (appropriately enough) It’s Not Cricket. Charters and Caldicott were also reprised for several radio series, and for a 1985 television series. Charters and Caldicott’s fame also extended to their inclusion in a series of Carreras Cigarette cards in the 1950s.

dventurer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image-1.jpg”> Charters & Caldicott

The gormless pe[/caption]The gormless personalities of Charters and Caldicott, a couple of blithering “Colonel Blimpish” snobs, was a comical throwback to a past England with ‘proper’ gentlemanly good manners and standards of dress[9]. Matthew Sweet saw the two blunderers (in their 1938 incarnations against a backdrop of appeasement) as symbols of “a peculiarly British obstinacy in the face of Nazi aggression” in Europe[10]. Their apathetic dispositions and complete lack of perspicacity about the momentous events happening around them also puts one in mind of Tom Stoppard’s two artless and aimless courtiers Rosencrantz and Guildenstern roaming through Elsinore, ‘Everyman’ figures in the play Rosencrantz and Guildenstern are Dead.

venturer.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/06/image-4.jpg”> The familiar picture of the familiar team

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[/caption]▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬▬
❈ The Lady Vanishes helped open Hollywood doors for Hitchcock … after ‘Hitch’ completed Jamaica Inn in 1939 (written by Gilliat et al) he set sail for America (for good), inviting Gilliat to join him however the Cheshireman declined the offer, preferring to stay in the smaller and infinitely less lucrative pond that was the British film industry (Babington, 2002)
¤ “Versatility” Gilliat once said, “was always our curse”, but as Gilbert Adair remarked in a 1994 obituary for the film-maker, “it was also their own form of individualism”
◘ Cole as well appeared in nine of L & G’s films
❃ this was twice too often to the well as the preceding Great St Trinian’s Train Robbery (1966) was also a lame effort at rehashing the by now decidedly stale formula

[1] although such was the working symbiosis between the two that the non-directing partner would in all likelihood make suggestions for improvements to the designated director where necessary, B Babington, Launder and Gilliat (2002)
[2] quoted in The Age (Melbourne), 08-Jun-1994
[3] G Adair & N Roddick, A Night at the Pictures: Ten Decades of British Film, (1985)
[4] Babington describes Launder and Gilliat as “modest auteurs”, Babington, op.cit.
[5] Adair & Roddick, loc.cit.
[6] ‘Launder and Gilliat’, BFI Screenonline, www.screenonline.org.uk
[7] J Suh, ‘Women, Work, Leisure in British Wartime Documentary Realism’, Literature/Film Quarterly, 40(1), 2012
[8] ‘Obituary: Frank Launder’, The Independent, 24-Feb-1997, www.independent.co.uk
[9] ‘Charters and Caldicott’, Wikipedia, http://en.m.wikipedia.org; ‘Charters and Caldicott’, www.chartersandcaldicott.co.uk
[10] M Sweet, ‘Mustard and cress’, The Guardian, 29-Dec-2007, www.theguardian.com