LONDON, ENGLAND.- Harry Gordon Selfridge (1858-1947) American entrepreneur and founder of the iconic Oxford Street store Selfridges, is to be honoured with an English Heritage Blue Plaque on August 14 at 10am. The unveiling will be at his former home, Landsdowne House, 9 Fitzmaurice Place in Berkeley Square, where he lived from 1921 to 1929.
Selfridge’s approach to retail was pioneering. He made extensive use of advertising, and changed the way stock was displayed. Goods were moved from behind counters and placed in front of the customers, while the perfume counters were placed right by the doors to entice customers further into the store.
Born in Wisconsin, Selfridge became a clerk in the Chicago retail firm of Marshall Field, Leiter & Co. rapidly becoming a junior partner. On leaving in 1904, he had amassed an estimated one million dollars.
On earlier visits to London, despite believing it to be ‘the greatest city in history’ Selfridge had been unimpressed by its stores. He moved to London in 1906 and began work on his own department store at the then unfashionable end of Oxford Street. Selfridges opened flamboyantly on 15 March 1909.
Selfridge set new standards in retailing, believing that ‘a great modern store should be as important to public life as a great civic building’. Among the 130 different departments he introduced a library, a roof-garden and restaurants. Staff were told not to badger customers to buy. In the store, a prominent sign stated ‘The customer is always right’.
Despite criticism of the ‘Americanisation’ of London, other shopkeepers in Oxford Street quickly benefited from the store’s presence, and it is largely thanks to Selfridge that the street remains the commercial heart of the West End.
Outside work, Selfridge lavished money on entertaining London’s élite at Landsdowne House where he lived at the height of his fame and fortune. After the death of his wife and of his mother, he became increasingly extravagant, buying racehorses, Rolls Royce’s and even a castle at Highcliffe in Hampshire. Selfridge’s Lansdowne House parties were famous in society, with the Dolly Sisters, celebrated cabaret artistes, dancing the ‘Charleston’.
The depression years of the late 1920s and early 1930s marked the end of this run of good fortune. The volume of business decreased considerably, and although heavily in debt to the company, Selfridge continued to gamble.
An ultimatum came on the eve of the outbreak of the Second World War; Selfridge was asked either to retire, or pay back the £100,000 he owed to the company. His title of President was surrendered in 1941 and he spent the last years of his life in poverty, dying at a flat in Putney in 1947.
The rise and fall of Gordon Selfridge, entrepreneur par excellence, is remarkable. Not long before his death he had to travel on buses to Oxford Street. Yet, in his now grade II listed department store, Selfridge’s energy, sense of innovation and grandeur have lived on. Today his name is still synonymous with shopping for people across the world.
