SPEAKER_00: Amazing, fascinating stories of inventions, ideas and innovations. Yes, this is the podcast about the things that have helped to shape our lives. Podcasts from the BBC World Service are supported by advertising.
SPEAKER_02: 50 Things That Made the Modern Economy with Tim Harford No, I'm just looking. These are words most of us have said at some point when browsing
SPEAKER_01: in a store and approached politely by a shop assistant. Most of us will not then have experienced the assistant snarling, then hop it, mate. Hearing those words in a London shop made quite an impression on Harry Gordon Selfridge. The year was 1888 and the flamboyant American was touring the great department stores of Europe in Vienna and Berlin, the famous Bon Marche in Paris and now Manchester and London to see what tips he could pick up for his then employer, Chicago's Marshall Field. Field had been busily popularising the aphorism, the customer is always right. Evidently this was not yet the case in England. Two decades later, Selfridge was back in London, opening his eponymous department store on Oxford Street, now a global mecca for retail, then an unfashionable backwater but handily near a station on a newly opened underground line. Selfridges caused a sensation. This was due partly to its sheer size. The retail space covered six acres. Plate glass windows had been a feature of High Street's for a few decades but Selfridge installed the largest glass sheets in the world and he created behind them the most sumptuous shop window displays. But more than scale, what set Selfridges apart was attitude. Harry Gordon Selfridge was introducing Londoners to a whole new shopping experience, one honed in the department stores of late 19th century America. Just looking was positively encouraged. As he had in Chicago, Selfridge swept away the previous shopkeeper's custom of stashing the merchandise in places where sales assistants had to fetch it for you, in cabinets, behind locked glass doors or high up on shelves that could be reached only with a ladder. He instead laid out the open aisle displays we now take for granted where you can touch a product, pick it up and inspect it from all angles without a salesperson hovering by your side. In the full page newspaper adverts he took out when his store opened, Selfridge compared the pleasures of shopping to those of sightseeing. Shopping had long been bound up with social display. The old arcades of the great European cities displaying their fine cotton fashions, gorgeously lit with candles and mirrors, they were places for the upper classes not only to see, but to be seen. Selfridge had no truck with snobbery or exclusivity. His adverts pointedly made clear that the whole British public would be welcome. No cards of admission are required. Management consultants nowadays talk about the fortune to be found at the bottom of the pyramid. Selfridge was way ahead of them. In his Chicago store he appealed to the working classes by dreaming up the concept of the bargain basement. Selfridge did perhaps more than anyone to invent shopping as we know it. But the ideas were in the air. Another trailblazer was an Irish immigrant named Alexander Turney Stewart. It was Stewart who introduced New Yorkers to the shocking concept of not hassling customers the moment they walked through the door. He called this novel policy free entrance. A.T. Stewart & Co. was among the first stores to practice the now ubiquitous clearance sale, periodically moving on the last bits of old stock at knockdown prices to make room for new. Stewart offered no quibble refunds. He made customers pay in cash or settle their bills quickly. Traditionally shoppers had expected to string out their lines of credit for up to a year. Another insight Stewart applied at his store was that not everybody likes to haggle. Some of us welcome the simplicity of being quoted a fair price and told we can take it or leave it. Stewart made possible this one price approach by accepting unusually low markups. I put my goods on the market at the lowest price I can afford, he explained,
SPEAKER_03: although I realise only a small profit on each sale, the enlarged area of business makes possible a large accumulation of capital. This idea wasn't totally unprecedented but
SPEAKER_01: it was certainly considered radical. The first salesman Stewart hired was appalled to hear that he would not be allowed to apply his finely tuned skill of sizing up the customer's apparent wealth and extracting as extravagant a price as possible. He resigned on the spot, revealing the youthful Irish shopkeeper he'd be bankrupt within a month. By the time Stewart died over five decades later he was one of the richest men in New York. The great department stores became cathedrals of commerce. In such shops one could buy anything from cradles to gravestones. There were picture galleries, smoking rooms, tea rooms, concerts. It was, says historian Frank Trentman, the birth of total shopping. The glory days of the city centre department store have faded a little. With the rise of cars has come the out of town shopping mall where land is cheaper. Tourists in England still enjoy Harrods and Selfridges but many also head to Bicester Village, a few miles north of Oxford, an outlet that specialises in luxury brands at a discount. But the experience of going to the shops has changed remarkably little since pioneers like Stewart and Selfridge turned it on its head. And it may be no coincidence that they did it at a time when women were gaining in social and economic power. There are of course some tired stereotypes about women and their supposed love of shopping. But the data suggest that the stereotypes aren't completely imaginary. Time use studies suggest women spend more time shopping than men do. Other research finds that this is a matter of preference as well as duty. Men tend to say they like shops with easy parking and short checkout lines so they can get what they came for and leave. Women are more likely to prioritise aspects of the shopping experience like the friendliness of sales assistants. Such research wouldn't have shocked Harry Gordon Selfridge. He saw that female customers offered profitable opportunities that other retailers were bungling and he made a point of trying to understand what they wanted. One of his quietly revolutionary moves Selfridges featured a ladies lavatory. Strange as it may sound to modern ears this was a facility that London shopkeepers had hitherto neglected to provide. Selfridge saw as other men apparently had not that women might want to stay in town all day without having to use an in-solubrious public convenience or retreat to a respectable hotel for tea whenever they wanted to relieve themselves. Lindy Woodhead who wrote a biography of Selfridge even thinks he could justifiably claim to have helped emancipate women. That's a big boast for any shopkeeper but social progress can sometimes come from unexpected directions and Harry Gordon Selfridge certainly saw himself as a social reformer. He once explained why at his Chicago store he'd introduced a creche. I came along just at the time when women wanted
SPEAKER_03: to step out on their own he said. They came to the store and realised some of their dreams.
SPEAKER_02: For more about Mr Selfridges shopping revolution read Shopping, Seduction and Mr Selfridge by Lindy Woodhead. For a full list of our sources please see BBCWorldService.com slash 50 things.
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