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Bargains and Battles: A Short History of the Department Store
The January sales are a winter institution in Britain, like fireworks in November and turkey at Christmas. Barely has the wrapping paper hit the floor when we're tramping off to the high street again demanding more stuff for less cash.
Shopping for recreation and bagging a bargain can be traced back to the Victorian era and the arrival of the department store. As the range of mass-produced goods increased, shops grew larger and were divided into departments.
When once shopkeepers knew their customers well and sold to them on credit, stores became busier and cash was used more frequently.
New ways of handling cash were developed here and in the United States, from wooden balls containing cash which travelled via an overhead railway, to the cash register invented by James and John Ritty around 1880.
Processing a sale was now easier and quicker, changing the whole shopping experience. In the United States, department stores grew in size and customers were left to themselves to browse rather than being pressurised by floorwalkers.
Marshall Field, the largest store in Chicago at the time, took on a young sales person called Harry Gordon Selfridge who was to revolutionise the retail trade. Known as Mile-a-Minute-Harry, Selfridge was responsible for making the shop an appealing destination and meeting place for women.
By placing enticing advertisements in newspapers, displaying merchandise attractively and not pressurising customers into a purchase, he made shopping fun.
He was also the first retailer to promote Christmas sales by counting down shopping days and the first to hold an annual sale of reduced-price stock. The bargain basement was another of Selfridge's retail innovations.
Selfridge rose through the company ranks and made the fortune with which he built his infamous London store. Selfridges opened for business on March 15 1909 and was London's largest department store.
At that time, Liberty and Harrods were the other major players in the capital. By 1927, the managing directors of Harrods and Selfridges bet on which of their stores would make more profit for the year. Gordon Selfridge lost and presented Harrods' Richard Burbidge with a silver replica of Harrods which still sits on the lower ground floor of the Knightsbridge store today.
The Selfridge flagship store used retail techniques that have become best practice around the world, from profitable perfume counters in pole position on the ground floor to background music and sophisticated restaurants. And let's not forget those sales.
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