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

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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 ▼
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✱ 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).

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✱ 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)


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[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)