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Selfridges
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Selfridges is a chain of department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK (after Harrods) and was opened on 15 March 1909. More recently, three other stores have been opened: Trafford, Greater Manchester (1998), Manchester city centre (2002) and Birmingham (2003).
ordon Selfridge was born in 1858 in Ripon, Wisconsin, and in 1879 joined Field, Leiter and Company (later to become Marshall Field & Company), where he worked under the Chicago retailer of the same name.
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Encyclopedia
Selfridges is a chain of department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store in London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK (after Harrods) and was opened on 15 March 1909. More recently, three other stores have been opened: Trafford, Greater Manchester (1998), Manchester city centre (2002) and Birmingham (2003).
History
H. Gordon Selfridge was born in 1858 in Ripon, Wisconsin, and in 1879 joined Field, Leiter and Company (later to become Marshall Field & Company), where he worked under the Chicago retailer of the same name. He worked his way up through the firm, married into the prominent Buckingham family, and amassed the fortune with which he built his new London store.
Selfridge's innovative marketing led to his success. He tried to make shopping a fun adventure instead of a chore. He put merchandise on display so customers could examine it, put the highly profitable perfume counter front-and-centre on the ground floor, and established policies that made it safe and easy for customers to shop — techniques that have been adopted by modern department stores the world over.
Either Selfridge or Marshall Field is popularly held to have coined the phrase "the customer is always right", and he did use it regularly in his extensive advertising.
He attracted shoppers with educational and scientific exhibits. He was himself interested in education and science, and believed that the displays would introduce potential new customers to Selfridges, generating both immediate and long-term sales.
In 1909, after the first cross-Channel flight, Louis Blériot's monoplane was exhibited at Selfridges, where it was seen by 12,000 people. The first public demonstration of television was by John Logie Baird from the first floor of Selfridges from 1-27 April 1925.
A Milne-Shaw seismograph was set up on the Selfridge store’s third floor in 1932, attached to one of the building's main stanchions, unaffected by traffic or shoppers. It recorded the Belgian earthquake of 11 June 1938 which was also felt in London. At the outbreak of war, the seismograph was moved from its original site near the Post Office to another part of the store. In 1947, the seismograph was given to the British Museum.
The provincial stores were sold to the John Lewis Partnership in the 1940s. The remaining Oxford Street store was acquired in 1951 by the Liverpool-based Lewis's chain of department stores, which was in turn taken over in 1965 by the Sears Group owned by Charles Clore. In March 1998 Selfridges had acquired a new logo at use to the present which came in tandem with the opening of the Manchester Trafford Centre store and Selfridges demerger from Sears.
Between 1998 and 2003, the store supplemented its London flagship store with a store at the Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester; because of its success a store in Exchange Square, Manchester was also opened. A store opened in 2003 in Birmingham's Bull Ring shopping complex becoming the chains largest branch outside London.
In 2003, the chain was acquired by Canada's Galen Weston for £598 million. Weston, a retailing expert who is the owner of Canada's major supermarket chains Loblaws and No Frills among others, has chosen to invest in renovation of the Oxford Street store, rather than to carry out planned expansion to Leeds, Newcastle Upon Tyne, Bristol, and Glasgow, despite Selfridges owning a site in the latter city. The Chief Executive is Irish retailer, Paul Kelly. Kelly has worked for the Weston organisation since the mid-eighties.
Architecture
Selfridge stores are known for architectural excellence. Their London store was designed by Daniel Burnham, who also crafted Marshall Field's main store in his home town of Chicago. The London store was built in phases, the first phase consisting only of the nine-and-a-half bays closest to the Duke Street corner. A scheme to erect a massive tower above the store was never carried out. Also involved in the design of the store were the American architect Francis Swales, who worked on decorative details, and the British architects Frank Atkinson and Thomas Smith Tait.
The Trafford store is noted for its modern staircase and marble exterior. Each floor of the Exchange Square store were designed by different architects giving each floor its own unique look. The Birmingham store, designed by architects Future Systems, is covered in 15,000 spun aluminium discs. The Birmingham store has been awarded 100 stores to visit in the world every year since it opened in 2003, from industry magazine Retail Week.
The stores are also distinctive for their yellow carrier bags - available in a selection of sizes.
Further reading
- Honeycombe, Gordon. Selfridges, Seventy-Five Years: The Story of the Store 1909-84. London, 1984
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