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Warring & Gillow
became ‘the largest furnishing
emporium in the world’. Founded in 1897 by the
partnership of Gillows of Lancaster and Warings
of Liverpool, the firm occupied a grand and beautiful
building which still stands on Oxford Street. Waring
& Gillow had a reputation for supplying bespoke
furniture for the grand ocean going liners and huge,
five star hotels of the day. During the First World
War they even manufactured nosebags for horses,
belts to hold machine gun bullets as well as running
a massive tent making factory at White City, which
employed 8,000 workers. Samuel James Warring also
started a building business. Ironically, one his biggest
projects was building a new store in Oxford Street for
a new department store king whose enterprise would
long outlive Warring & Gillow - the new store was
for none other than
Harry Gordon Selfridge.
So, entering our story at last comes the remarkable,
Mr Selfridge ready to turn the shopping world of
London upside down and give his fellow traders a
huge shock. Ambitious, driven and a true shopping
visionary, by the time Selfridge arrived in London in
1906 he had already risen from a simple stock-boy
at the Marshall Field store in Chicago to partner.
His ideas had transformed shopping at Marshall Field
and in the States generally. When he was refused a
senior partnership in 1904 he resigned and set about
exploiting a huge opportunity in London.
Already in his 50s and a wealthy man by anyone’s
reckoning Selfridge saw that London’s department
stores had ‘grown like Topsy’ – extending into
adjacent stores without any overall plan. Their
windows were large - but packed with goods and
much of the stock was kept in drawers. Sales
assistants would take out items on request. Selfridge
saw all of this as hopelessly old fashioned and he set
about transforming the shopping scene. For a start he
planned to build a massive store on one site, buying
up all of the properties he required before he began
building. He chose the ‘wrong’ end of Oxford Street
near Marble Arch and set about building a true palace
of shopping. This was the first department store to
be built from scratch rather than expansion into
other properties. He could plan the store for the
convenience of customers – and to generate bigger
sales and so more profit. For all of his abilities as a
retailer, most of his talent and energy – and money –
was spent in advertising and publicity. He instituted
the concept of a ‘Sale’ in Chicago and brought this
idea to London, he had everything in the shop
co-ordinated to give a ‘brand image’ and brought over
from America window designers – who didn’t try and
cram everything in to the display, but made them
almost works of art in their own right. However, he
failed in getting Bond Street Underground Station
renamed ‘Selfridges’ – that was a step too far!
Opening day at Selfridges, 15 March 1909