Jet Lag

Thursday I awakened just after 4:00am London time. Try as I might, I could not fall back to sleep. So up and about for breakfast in the lounge around 6:15. Every kind of thing you would want to eat--fresh fruit, yogurt, pastries, breads, eggs, bacon, sausage, oatmeal, smoked salmon, cheeses, and meats. And even more. A veritable feast--and someone else sets up and cleans up for you. Very nice to be on vacation.

Selfridges-- According to wikipedia (the source for many facts) H. Gordon Selfridge was born in 1856 in Ripon, Wisconsin, and in 1879 joined Field, Leiter and Company (later to become Marshall Field & Company), where he worked for the famous Chicago retailer. He worked his way up through the firm, married Rose Buckingham of the prominent Chicago Buckingham family, and amassed the fortune with which he built his new London store.

Selfridge's innovative marketing led to his success. He tried to make shopping a fun adventure instead of a chore. He put merchandise on display so customers could examine it, put the highly profitable perfume counter front-and-centre on the ground floor, and established policies that made it safe and easy for customers to shop – techniques that have been adopted by modern department stores the world over.

Either Selfridge or Marshall Field is popularly held to have coined the phrase "the customer is always right",^[3] and Selfridge used it regularly in his extensive advertising.

Oxford Street store in London

Selfridge attracted shoppers with educational and scientific exhibits and was himself interested in education and science, and believed that the displays would introduce potential new customers to Selfridges, generating both immediate and long-term sales.

In 1909, after the first cross-Channel flight, Louis Blériot's monoplane was exhibited at Selfridges, where it was seen by 12,000 people. The first public demonstration oftelevision was by John Logie Baird from the first floor of Selfridges from 1 to 27 April 1925.

In the 1920s and 1930s, the roof of the store hosted terraced gardens, cafes, a mini golf course and an all-girl gun club. The roof, with its spectacular views across London, was a popular place for strolling after a shopping trip and was often used for fashion shows. During the Second World War the store was bombed in 1940, 1941 and 1944 causing catastrophic damage. After the devastating bombing of the department store in 1940 owner H. Gordon Selfridge vowed never to open the rooftop gardens again.^[4]

A Milne-Shaw seismograph was set up on the Selfridge store’s third floor in 1932, attached to one of the building's main stanchions, unaffected by traffic or shoppers. It recorded the Belgian earthquake of 11 June 1938 which was also felt in London. At the outbreak of war, the seismograph was moved from its original site near thePost Office to another part of the store. In 1947, the seismograph was given to the British Museum.

Selfridges at the Trafford Centre, which opened in 1998

Selfridges had expanded over the years to include fifteen provincial stores, but these were sold to the John Lewis Partnership in the 1940s.^[5] The remaining Oxford Street store was acquired in 1951 by the Liverpool-based Lewis's chain of department stores, which was in turn taken over in 1965 by the Sears Group owned by Charles Clore.^[6] Under the Sears group, branches in Ilford and Oxford opened, the latter remaining Selfridges until 1986, when Sears rebranded it as a Lewis's store. In 1990, Sears Holdings split Selfridges from Lewis's and placed Lewis's in administration a year later. In March 1998, Selfridges acquired its current logo in tandem with the opening of the Manchester Trafford Centre store and Selfridges demerger from Sears.

In September 1998, Selfridges expanded and opened a department store in the newly-opened Trafford Centre in Greater Manchester. Following its success, a second 125,000-square-foot (11,600 m²) store was opened in Exchange Square inManchester city centre. A 260,000-square-foot (24,000 m²)^[7] store opened in 2003 in Birmingham's Bull Ring.

Manchester, Exchange SquareSelfridges

In 2003, the chain was acquired by Canada's Galen Weston for £598 million. Weston, a retailing expert who is the owner of department store chains such as Holt Renfrew and Brown Thomas as well as major supermarket chains in Canada, has chosen to invest in renovation of the Oxford Street store – rather than to create new stores in British cities other than Manchester and Birmingham.^[8] The Chief Executive is Irish retailer, Paul Kelly, who has worked for the Weston organisation since the mid-1980s.^{[citation needed]}

I had no idea about the history of this shop. That Selfridge came from Ripon, Wisconsin is especially surprising to me. As a child, I attended camp at Green Lake, Wisconsin, very close to Ripon. Hardly seemed like a spot that would have an entrepreneur --one who worked for Marshall Field (my first employer as a teenager) in Chicago. We were all very impressed with the store--a clerk told us it had won acclaim as the best store in the world--beating Harrod's, KaDaWe (Berlin), Bloomies (New York and beyond), etc. One of our group commented that the departments looked curated--as though in an art museum. I definitely need to return before we leave.

Last night's dinner was a few blocks from the hotel--perhaps not the place one would go to in London, but a pleasant, neighborhood, family-owned, Italian pizzeria with typical southern Italian fare (e.g. lasagna, spaghetti, calamari and so on). Dorothy and I shared a dish and we just about ate the 1/2 portion since it was so large.

The sun is shining brightly and I look forward to a day walking this morning and touring this afternoon.

Stay tuned and please comment.