Revolution in shopping: how Department stores have changed our habits
“The customer is always right”; that to touch; women’s toilet in a Department store — like the pioneers-the entrepreneurs made shopping more democratic.
“I’m just looking”. This phrase most of us have probably ever uttered at the sight of the approaching smiling seller. And hardly anybody got in response: “Then get out of here”.
But these words heard in one London shop, made a lasting impression on Harry Gordon Selfridge.
The year was 1888, and extravagant American, toured the major European Department stores — he was in Vienna, Berlin, in the famous Bon Marche in Paris, then came to Manchester and London to gain useful information and send them to your boss in Chicago, Marshall Field.
Field coined the phrase “the customer is always right,” which, as it turned out, it was obvious not for all.
20 years later, Selfridge came back to London — this time to open under his own name a General store on Oxford street.
Today Oxford street is a magnet for millions of customers from all over the world, and was then considered of little interest to urban backyard whose sole plus was the newly opened metro line with several located along street stations.
Department store Selfridges has become a sensation, partly because of its size: its trade halls covering an area of 24 thousand square meters.
A special approach
Selfridge established his shop the giant showcase in the world, and behind them were placed the most splendid exhibition of the products.
But even more than size, the new store impressed to the buyer.
Harry Gordon Selfridge introduced a new style of shopping, which at the end of the XIX century already taken root in Department stores in America. “Just to look” very encouraged.
As in Chicago, Selfridge departed from past tradition to put products in locked glass cabinets or high on shelves, which it was impossible to reach.
Instead, he introduced the use of open shelves along the wide passages, we perceive as something self-evident: they are allowed to handle the merchandise, to take it in hand to examine from all sides without constantly hanging over the soul of the seller.
In advertising their new store, which took a newspaper strip, Selfridge likened the pleasure of shopping with what people experience when sightseeing.
Shopping has always been closely associated with social status.
The old shopping arcades of European capitals with their shop Windows, illuminated by the glow of candles and mirrors, where wore dresses of the finest fabrics in the latest fashion, was a place where privileged classes not only looked at others, but showing himself.
Selfridge eschewed exclusivity and do not promote snobbery. Advertising his store pointedly welcomed “the entire British public,” emphasizing: “No invitations are needed”.
“Base of the pyramid”
Today consultants on management issues say that sources of income have to look at the “bottom of the pyramid” — that is, many social groups of the population with lowest incomes, however, Selfridge was far ahead of them.