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    Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce: An Abridged Version of the Classic Text on Business and Life
    Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce: An Abridged Version of the Classic Text on Business and Life
    Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce: An Abridged Version of the Classic Text on Business and Life
    Ebook154 pages40 minutes

    Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce: An Abridged Version of the Classic Text on Business and Life

    By Harry Gordon Selfridge

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    About this ebook

    A captivating look inside the heart and mind of Harry Selfridge!
    Founder of one of the greatest department stores in the world, Harry Gordon Selfridge reopens his doors--and extravagant life--in this updated edition of his classic work. From his striking window displays during the holidays to his glittering love affairs with the most beautiful women in Europe, this book reveals the secrets behind his success as a tycoon. Filled with revolutionary thoughts about business, leadership, and society, Selfridge will inspire you with powerful aphorisms like:
    • People will sit up and take notice of you if you will sit up and take notice of what makes them sit up and take notice.
    • The boss drives his men; the leader coaches them.
    • The customer is always right.
    With Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce, you will uncover the innovative ideas that helped launch London's most iconic department store and that changed the lives of women and businessmen everywhere.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherSimon & Schuster
    Release dateAug 18, 2013
    ISBN9781440569104
    Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce: An Abridged Version of the Classic Text on Business and Life
    Author

    Harry Gordon Selfridge

    Harry Gordon Selfridge (1856–1947) was an American-born British retail magnate, who founded the London-based department store Selfridges. His thirty-year leadership of Selfridges led to him becoming one of the most respected and wealthy retail magnates in the United Kingdom. He has been profiled in the popular BBC series Mr. Selfridge, as played by Jeremy Piven.

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      Book preview

      Mr. Selfridge's Romance of Commerce - Harry Gordon Selfridge

      INTRODUCTION

      Both to contemporaries and to us at the distance of nearly a century, Harry Gordon Selfridge seems bigger than reality. In the course of a life that began and ended in genteel poverty, he rose to become one of the most famous men in Europe. He transformed the department store, changed advertising forever, and embarked on a series of glittering love affairs with some of the great beauties of his age. When we enter a department store today and find ourselves facing the perfume and makeup counters on the first floor, we are seeing the work of Harry Selfridge. When we stop to admire striking widow displays that draw crowds during the holiday season, we are paying tribute to the genius of Harry Selfridge.

      Selfridge might almost have inspired the young-man-born-into-poverty-and-makes-good novels of Horatio Alger. Fighting his way up the economic and social ladder, he started delivering newspapers when he was ten years old in order to supplement the family income. Before he was twenty-one, he was working for the famed Chicago store owner Marshall Field. There he coined the classic advertising line Only _____ shopping days until Christmas and possibly originated the phrase (much hated by sales clerks) The customer is always right. He also found time to marry the beautiful Chicago heiress and property developer Rose Buckingham.

      It was a time of rapid change. In 1893, the Chicago World’s Fair drew millions of visitors to the city’s south side, where they rode the world’s first Ferris wheel and strolled among the buildings of the White City built along the Midway (the inspiration for L. Frank Baum’s Emerald City of Oz). Walking among the people, Selfridge noted what it took to entertain and excite a large crowd—thoughts that would later bear rich fruit.

      Fashion, like everything else, was in flux. The large, stiff dresses of the later Victorian period were giving way to softer, more practical clothing. Princess Alexandra, the Prince of Wales’s wife, made popular the two-piece. By the turn of the century, the bustle had largely disappeared; women wore high-necked blouses, swept their hair up, and took advantage of the new freedom their clothing allowed them. Among those who did so was the dancer Isadora Duncan, who became a friend (some said lover) of Harry Selfridge.

      All these new fashions were on display at Marshall Field’s, but Selfridge wanted more—he wanted his own store, where he could put into practice his theories about advertising and display.

      In 1906, while on a trip to London, he determined to expand into the Old World. He left Field’s and on March 15, 1909, opened Selfridges at the west end of Oxford Street. The opening was somewhat less than ideal: it rained heavily, and inside the store the crush of visitors overtaxed the bathrooms and drinking fountains,

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