Selfridges

Selfridges Retail Ltd.

Type	Private
Industry	Retail
Genre	Department Store
Founded	1909
Founder	Harry Gordon Selfridge
Headquarters	Oxford Street, London, United Kingdom
Number of locations	4 Oxford Street, London Trafford Centre, Manchester Exchange Square, Manchester Bullring, Birmingham
Key people	Alannah Weston, former creative director (2004-2014) and deputy chairman at the store’s parent company Selfridges Group (since 2014) Linda Hewson, creative director (since 2014) Anne Pitcher, U.K. managing director
Owner	Galen Weston
Website	http://www.selfridges.com/

Selfridges, also known as Selfridges & Co., is a chain of high end department stores in the United Kingdom. It was founded by Harry Gordon Selfridge. The flagship store on London's Oxford Street is the second largest shop in the UK (after Harrods) and opened 15 March 1909. Other Selfridges stores opened in the Trafford Centre (1998); Exchange Square (2002) in Manchester; and in the Bullring, Birmingham (2003).

In the 1940s, smaller provincial Selfridge stores were sold to the John Lewis Partnership, and in 1951 the original Oxford Street store was acquired by the Liverpool-based Lewis's chain of department stores. Lewis's and Selfridges were then taken over in 1965 by the Sears Group owned by Charles Clore. Expanded under the Sears group to include branches in Manchester and Birmingham, in 2003 the chain was acquired by Canada's Galen Weston for £598 million.

The shop's early history was dramatised in ITV's 2013 series Mr Selfridge.

The basis of Selfridge's success was his relentlessly innovative marketing, which was elaborately expressed in his Oxford Street store. Originally from America himself, Selfridge attempted to dismantle the idea that consumerism was strictly an American phenomenon. He tried to make shopping a fun adventure and a form of leisure instead of a chore, transforming the department store into a social and cultural landmark that provided women with a public space in which they could be comfortable and legitimately indulge themselves. Emphasizing the importance of creating a welcome environment, he placed merchandise on display so customers could examine it, moved 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. These techniques have been adopted by modern department stores around the world.