Book Review:Harry Gordon Selfridge's visionary retail strategies and personal weaknesses have been laid bare, writes Richard Nesbitt
If you look hard enough, there is always an Irish aspect to things. In the case of Harry Gordon Selfridge, he was on the first commercial flight from London to Dublin. His iconic department store, Selfridges, was the model for the rebuilding of Clerys after it was burnt down in 1916, and Selfridges is now run by an Irishman, having been taken private by Galen Weston only a few years ago.
Harry, an American, was one of the visionaries in the development of department stores as we know them today. Lindy Woodhead's Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridgeis an absorbing read about one of the men who created the "great cathedrals of shopping", as Émile Zola aptly described department stores.
But Harry was different because he grasped the concept of consumption as a sensual female entertainment better than anyone of his generation.
On the back of the wealth created by the industrial transformation that had occurred in Britain, Harry brought to a new spending population, proud to show off their wealth, consumerism like they had never seen it before. In 1909 Selfridges opened on Oxford Street, London, to the biggest blaze of publicity ever to accompany the opening of a shop.
But of course department stores are not shops. Harry knew that. He had made the department store Marshall Field's of Chicago the most successful retailer in the US. He did this by introducing the policy of browsing. Unlike at other retailers, a customer who was "just looking" at Field's wasn't shown the door but was welcome to browse to their heart's content. The goods were out on display, not behind the counter.
The father of today's department store was probably Aristide Boucicaut, of Au Bon Marché in Paris. Ideas such as fixed pricing, annual sales and money-back guarantees and a huge range of merchandise in departments were pioneered by Boucicaut. These ideas had a truly formative influence on Harry's vision - he realised that the future lay in retailing, not in wholesaling.
Another influence on Harry was Marshall Field, who did not agree with the changes Harry wanted to bring to his store.
Harry wanted to disconnect the buying function of the retail store from the wholesale trade that was the bedrock of the original Marshall Field model. Field said no. Harry left. Field, a man of few words, noted he would need another "office boy".
Harry brought showmanship to retailing. When Louis Blériot flew the English Channel, Harry put his aircraft in the shop window after the flight, attracting enormous crowds. He busted the stiff upper lip of English retailing and stormed its powerbrokers' social circles.
Woodhead spares no blushes in her account of Harry's journey to riches and fame. His weakness for high living, fast women, grand houses, extravagant entertaining and an insatiable addiction to gambling are an essential part of his story.
The book is an account of much more than the development of modern retailing. In building Selfridges, for instance,Harry took on and rewrote the antiquated rules and regulations relating to modern steel-frame buildings. Although he was a hard taskmaster, expecting the very best from his staff, Harry was also a respected employer.
Harry had the art of turning things to his advantage when retailing, but in the end it seems to have been his love for the good life, gambling and a disregard for his personal financial affairs that led to his fall from grace at the age of 83, when he was removed from Selfridges by a swift boardroom coup as the second World War commenced.
He was stripped of all he had. Part of the deal with Selfridges was to guarantee a meagre pension until his death in 1947. Of himself, Harry said: "When I die, I want it said of me, 'He dignified and ennobled commerce.'" Read this book and I think you will agree he did.
• Richard Nesbitt SCis company chairman of Arnotts
Shopping, Seduction & Mr Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead Profile Books; €24
