A century for Mr Selfridge and his spirit lives on

Laura Staples recalls the American-born retailer whose great Oxford Street emporium revolutionised British shopping habits — and is holding out against recession today

Laura Staples recalls the American-born retailer whose great Oxford Street emporium revolutionised British shopping habits — and is holding out against recession today

One hundred years ago this week, Harry Gordon Selfridge threw open the doors of his famous Oxford Street store. After an early career with what became the Marshall Field department store company in Chicago, he was keen to build an emporium of his own. In doing so, he revolutionised British shopping and helped create the modern consumer society.

Selfridge wanted more than just a big shop. He targeted female customers, recognising the huge spending potential of newly empowered Edwardian women. Selfridges would provide the ladies of the day with all their household needs, plus a chance to indulge themselves at the same time. He stocked all the latest fashions and technological marvels. He opened restaurants and cafés. His store became a tourist attraction: its pioneering steel frame supported vast plate-glass windows, each one elaborately dressed. Window-shopping became the new metropolitan pastime.

A century on, Selfridges’ distinctive architecture and bright yellow shopping bags make it one of the most recognisable shops in the world and the spirit of the founder lives on. But this hasn’t always been the case. What you see today is the result of nearly 20 years’ hard work to recapture the original magic.

In the early 1990s, the store had lost its sense of direction, selling a bit of everything, with too much focus on private labels. It was owned by Sears, a vast retail conglomerate, and Selfridges’ chief executive Tim Daniels and finance director Peter Williams were frustrated. When he joined in 1991, Williams was struck by how little the owners had spent on the store. ‘The lighting was very dingy. The escalators were 30 years old. It was a really tired, old department store,’ says Williams. ‘It had this fantastic position and architecture on the outside, but frankly, the inside was a bit of a shambles.’

One problem was that it was failing to attract big brands like Ralph Lauren and Calvin Klein, who thought the store was just too grotty, says Williams. But Daniels’ team hatched a plan. They abandoned efforts to coax £40 million from Sears for a complete refurbishment. Instead, they set about persuading the board to part with a mere £6 million, so they could do up a single section of the store. Wisely, they set about transforming the eastern end — nearest Bond Street tube station and the most heavily trafficked. They punched giant holes to make way for a new escalator, refitting every floor in the process. Just a year after opening the new section in 1993, its sales had increased by 25 per cent, while sales elsewhere in the store were up by only 2 or 3 per cent.

The return on investment was undeniable and they secured a further cash injection to refurbish the rest of the store. In 1994, work began on the western end, and in 1995 new escalators were installed at the back of the building, giving the young women’s fashion area a new lease of life. This was crucial to the store’s renaissance. Previously home only to Miss Selfridge, the section was relaunched later that year as Spirit, offering a range of high-street brands side by side. ‘Sales went from £10 million to £30 million in about two years. It was just phenomenal,’ says Williams.

In 1996, Tim Daniels was succeeded as chief executive by Vittorio Radice, who was keen to build on the store’s growing momentum. It was clear to him that the refurbishment needed to be accompanied by a change of ethos. Selfridges needed to decide what it stood for and give shoppers a reason to visit the store.

‘Oxford Street is a tremendous pull for people,’ he says. ‘Everyone is welcome, from teenagers to grannies. With such a big audience, you need a very strong voice and a very clear character.’ But when he arrived at the store, it was more a case of ‘too many chefs overcooking the soup’.

Radice’s mission was to restore the Selfridges identity. ‘Harry Gordon Selfridge wanted to build a place where anything could happen,’ he says. In this spirit, Radice brought a series of new events to the Oxford Street store — two of the most successful being based on Bollywood and ‘Tokyo Life’ themes. ‘They weren’t about products — not just another Italian wine promotion. They were about something artistic that added emotion around the store,’ says Williams. ‘They were a way of building the brand.’

Radice and Williams made a strong team, working together to improve back-office systems, opening a new warehouse and introducing a process of automatic stock replenishment. But there was another big project afoot. Having demerged from Sears in 1998, Selfridges was set to become a chain. It opened its first store outside London in 1998 in the Trafford Centre on the outskirts of Manchester.

‘I have to say, at the beginning, because so much needed to be done in London to rebuild the brand, I thought the opening of the Trafford Centre store came 12 to 18 months too early for me,’ says Radice. ‘It would have been much easier to create a brand and then on the back of that, open in other cities in a more confident way.’ But it wasn’t long before the company opened another store in central Manchester in 2002, and a fourth in Birmingham’s rebuilt Bull Ring in 2003.

‘What’s really interesting about Selfridges is the reinvention of old ideas,’ says Williams. ‘What we did in Birmingham was to look for a 21st-century version of what had been done 100 years ago.’ There was no point trying to build a replica of the Oxford Street store, complete with Portland stone and Corinthian columns. Instead Selfridges teamed up with Future Systems, the architectural practice which came up with the curvaceous design of the new Bull Ring. ‘Now, every time you see a picture of Birmingham, it features the [Selfridges] building. It was fantastic to create that iconic imagery — just as had been done a century earlier by the likes of Harrods and Selfridges,’ says Williams.

In March 2003, Radice left Selfridges for new challenges at Marks & Spencer — something he jokily refers to as a case of ‘the seven-year itch’. Williams stepped into the chief executive role, but soon found himself at the centre of a takeover battle. Such was his faith in the store that he launched a £550 million management buy-out bid, but was beaten by Canadian retail baron Galen Weston, who offered £598 million. The Weston family installed Paul Kelly, who had been running their exclusive Brown Thomas store in Dublin, as the new chief executive.

Under the new owners, Selfridges has largely continued on the path set by Daniels, Radice and Williams. It is still committed to attracting young people and does so by stocking the latest brands — from Krispy Kreme doughnuts to Swarowski crystal iPods. You can even get a tattoo. Radice is an admirer of the Westons. ‘I think they’ve done a fantastic job,’ he says. ‘When you run a company like that you have to stay on top of it 24 hours a day. They’ve done well in improving and continuing what was already there.’

And Selfridges appears to be coping with the recession. Sales in December were up 5 per cent year-on-year, while rivals House of Fraser and John Lewis both suffered a decline. Kelly says full-year profits for the year to 31 January will be up on the previous year’s £84 million.

This year will be tough for all retailers, but Vittorio Radice is confident in Selfridges’ endeavours. ‘With the variety of products that are in the store and the sheer number of people that go through it, as long as you keep increasing your footfall, you’re more likely to navigate this crisis,’ he says. ‘If you’re talking to the 30 million people coming to the store, not just the 200,000 that can afford expensive handbags, you will be able to cope.’

Harry Gordon Selfridge was no stranger to crisis himself. In 1929, when both the US and Britain were reeling from the Wall Street crash and the onset of the Great Depression, he refused to be beaten.

The store reported record pre-tax profits the following February of £480,000. Selfridge told Business magazine: ‘We broke all our past records in 59 departments during October, and almost as many in November. New methods of selling, new channels of distribution, new ways of advertising are transforming our performance.’

And he said something that every retailer should take to heart in 2009: ‘Business is still largely what you make it. By reiterating that business is bad, people hypnotise themselves into a state of apathy.’