Harry Gordon Selfridge
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Harry Gordon Selfridge (January 11, 1858 – May 8, 1947) was an American-born retail magnate, who founded the British department store Selfridges.
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Brief biography
Early years
Harry Gordon Selfridge was born in Wisconsin, USA on January 11, 1858. In 1879 he joined the retail firm of Field, Leiter and Company (which became Marshall Field and Company.) Over the following twenty-five years Gordon Selfridge worked his way up the commercial ladder. He was appointed a junior partner and amassed a considerable personal fortune in the process.
London investment
In 1906 Gordon Selfidge travelled to London, England with his wife Rosalie. He was unimpressed with the quality of existing British stores and he decided to invest some £400,000 in building his own department store in what was then the unfashionable western end of Oxford Street.
Selfridges
Gordon Selfridge named his new store after himself, and it opened to the public on March 15, 1909. It set new standards for the retailing business. He is credited with originating the phrase "The customer is always right." The store was extensively promoted through paid advertising. The shopfloors were structured so that goods could be made more accessible to customers. His staff were instructed to be on hand to assist customers, but not to aggessively sell the merchandise.
Personal life
Gordon Selfidge was devoted to his wife who died in 1918. Without her steadying influence he began to spend extravagantly. He also maintained a busy social life with lavish entertainment at his home in Lansdowne House located at 9 Fitzmaurice Place, in Berkeley Square. Today there is a blue plaque noting that Gordon Selfridge lived there from 1921 to 1929. At the height of his fortune he also bought Highcliffe Castle in Hampshire.
Demise and death
During the years of the Great Depression, Gordon Selfridge watched his fortune evaporate and it was not helped by his gambling habit. In 1941 he left Selfridges, moved from his lavish home and in 1947 he died in poverty at Putney, in south-west London. Gordon Selfidge was buried at Highcliffe, next to his wife and his mother.
Selfridges today
For almost 90 years, Selfridges was a one-location business, but in 1998 it opened its first store outside London, at the Trafford Centre, on the outskirts of Manchester. By the end of 2003, Selfridges had four stores: two in Manchester and (the latest) one in the Bullring shopping complex at Birmingham which opened in September 2003. The Birmingham store is covered in 15,000 spun aluminium discs and was designed by the architectual firm of Future Systems. A further store is scheduled to open in Glasgow in 2007.
See also:
External link
- Selfridges (http://www.selfridges.co.uk)