Harrods is a
department store located on
Brompton Road in
Knightsbridge,
London,
England. The Harrods
brand also applies to other enterprises undertaken by the Harrods group of companies including
Harrods Bank,
Harrods Estates,
Harrods Aviation and
Air Harrods.
The store occupies a site and has over one million square feet (90,000 m
2) of selling space in over 330 departments. This makes Harrods one of the largest department stores in the world together with
Macy's New York (the UK's second-biggest shop, Oxford Street's
Selfridges is a little over half the size with of selling space).
The Harrods motto is
Omnia Omnibus Ubique — All Things for All People, Everywhere. Several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the Food Hall are world famous.
Background
Fashion plate of 1909 shows upper-class Londoners walking in front of Harrods
Harrods was established in 1834 in London’s
East End, when founder
Charles Henry Harrod set up a wholesale grocery in
Stepney,
[ www.harrods.com (history)] with a special interest in tea. In 1849, to escape the filth of the inner city and to capitalise on trade to the
Great Exhibition of 1851 in nearby
Hyde Park, Harrod took over a small shop in the district of
Knightsbridge, on the site of the current store. Beginning in a single room employing two assistants and a messenger boy, Harrod’s son
Charles Digby Harrod built the business into a thriving retail operation selling medicines, perfumes, stationery, fruit, and vegetables. Harrods rapidly expanded, acquired the adjoining buildings, and employed one hundred people by 1880.
However, the store’s booming fortunes were reversed in early December 1883, when it burnt to the ground.
Remarkably, in view of this calamity, Charles Harrod fulfilled all of his commitments to his customers to make Christmas deliveries that year — and made a record profit in the process. In short order, a new building was raised on the same site, and soon Harrods extended credit for the first time to its best customers, among them
Oscar Wilde, legendary actresses
Lillie Langtry and
Ellen Terry,
Noël Coward,
Sigmund Freud,
A. A. Milne, and many members of the
British Royal Family.
On Wednesday, 16 November 1898, Harrods debuted England's first "moving staircase" (
escalator) in their Brompton road stores; the device was actually a woven leather conveyor belt-like unit with a mahogany and "silver plate-glass" balustrade. Nervous customers were offered
brandy at the top to revive them after their 'ordeal'.
Significant events in Harrods' history
- 1834: Charles Henry Harrod (1799-1885) founds a wholesale grocery in Stepney, East London
- 1861: Harrods undergoes a transformation when it was taken over by Harrod's son, Charles Digby Harrod (1841-1905)
- 1883: On December 6, fire guts the shop buildings, giving the family the opportunity to rebuild on a grander scale
- 1889: Charles Digby Harrod retires, and Harrods shares are floated on the London Stock Exchange under the name Harrod's Stores Limited
- 1912: Harrods opens its first and only foreign branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina. It became independent of Harrods in the late 1940s but still traded under the Harrods name usable only in Argentina Harrods Buenos Aires.
- 1919: Harrods buys the Manchester department store, Kendals; it took on the Harrods name for a short time in the 1920s, but the name was changed back to Kendals following protests from staff and customers.
- 1959: The British department store holding company, House of Fraser, buys Harrods.
- 1986: The small town of Otorohanga in New Zealand briefly changed its name to Harrodsville in response to legal threats made by Mohamed Al Fayed against a person with the surname of Harrod, who had used the name "Harrod's" for his shop. Other town businesses changed their store name to Harrod's in support, and the resultant lampooning in the British press led to Al Fayed dropping the legal action.
- 1994: The relationship between House of Fraser and Harrods is severed. Harrods remains under the ownership of the Fayed family, and House of Fraser is floated on the stock exchange.
- 1997: The British court issues an injunction to restrain the Buenos Aires Harrods store from trading under the Harrods name.
- 2006: The Harrods "102" store opens opposite the main store on Brompton Road; it features concessions like Krispy Kreme and Yo! Sushi, as well as florists, a herbalist, a masseur, and an oxygen spa.
- 2006: Omar Fayed, Mohamed's youngest son, joins the Harrods board.
Products and services
The store's 330 departments offer a wide range of products and services. Products on offer include clothing for every sort of customer (women, men, children, and infants), electronics, jewellery, sporting gear, bridal
trousseau, pets and pet accessories, toys, food and drink, health and beauty items, packaged gifts, stationery, housewares, home appliances, furniture, and much more.
A representative sample of store services includes 28 restaurants (number has been questioned by Billy Mc), serving everything from
high tea to
tapas to
pub food to
haute cuisine; a personal shopping-assistance programme known as "By Appointment"; a watch repair service; a tailor; a dispensing pharmacy; a beauty spa and salon; a barbers shop; Harrods Financial Services; Harrods Bank; Ella Jade Bathroom Planning and Design Service; private events planning and catering; food delivery; a wine steward;
bespoke "picnic" hampers and gift boxes; bespoke cakes; and bespoke fragrance formulations.
Up to 300,000 customers visit the store on peak days, comprising the highest proportion of customers from non-English speaking countries of any department store in London. More than five thousand staff from over fifty different countries work at Harrods. A fleet of fifty delivery vehicles make up to 225,000 deliveries every year. Approximately 11,500 energy-efficient light bulbs turn Harrods into a beacon of light each night, 300 of which are replaced every day.
There are also a number of concessions opposite the main store on Brompton Road in 'Harrods 102' such as
Turnbull & Asser,
HMV,
Waterstones,
Krispy Kreme and David Clulow Opticians.
As of the 15th October 2009, Harrods Bank has started selling gold bars and coins that customers can buy "off the shelf". The gold products range from 1g to 12.5 kg, and can be purchased within Harrods Bank. They also offer storage services, as well as the ability to sell back gold to Harrods in the future.
Criticism
Harrods and
Mohamed Al Fayed have been criticised for selling real animal fur with regular protests organised outside Harrods. Harrods is the only department store in the UK that has continued to sell fur. Harrods was sharply criticized in 2004 by the Hindu community for marketing a line of feminine underwear (designed by
Roberto Cavalli) which featured the images of South-Asian goddesses. The line was eventually withdrawn and formal apologies were made.
Royal warrants
The opulent
Egyptian-style clothing department at Harrods, London. Many places in the store's interior have an Ancient Egyptian theme, to reflect the owner's heritage. Fayed has had the decor listed so it can never be removed or altered.
Harrods was the holder of
royal warrants from:
Harrods had held The Duke of Edinburgh's warrant since 1956, but it was rescinded by
Prince Philip on
21 December 2001 because of a "significant decline in the trading relationship" between the duke and the store.
Al Fayed then pre-emptively removed all the royal coats of arms that had been prominently displayed by the business, even though other warrants were yet to expire or be withdrawn. None of the royal grantors of warrants had spent any money at Harrods since 1997, the year
Diana, Princess of Wales, died.
Egyptian cobra
On
10 September, 2002, Harrods hired a live
Egyptian cobra to protect the shoe counter, guarding a £62,000 (€84,880) pair of haute couture
ruby-,
sapphire- and
diamond-encrusted
sandals launched by designer
Rene Caovilla.
Memorials
"Innocent Victims", the second of two memorials in Harrods
Since the
deaths of
Diana, Princess of Wales, and
Dodi Fayed, Mohamed Al Fayed's son, two memorials commissioned by Al Fayed have been erected inside Harrods to the couple. The first, unveiled on
April 12,
1998, consists of photographs of the two behind a pyramid-shaped display that holds a wine glass still smudged with lipstick from Diana's last dinner as well as what is described as an engagement ring Dodi purchased the day before they died.
[Rick Steves, , /www.ricksteves.com.]The second memorial, unveiled in 2005 and located by the Egyptian escalator at door three is titled "Innocent Victims", is a bronze statue of the two dancing on a beach beneath the wings of an albatross. The albatross is a bird that is said to symbolise the "Holy Spirit".
[, CNN.com, September 1, 2005.] The sculpture was created by 80 year old Bill Mitchell who is a close friend of Al Fayed and has been the artistic design advisor to Harrods for 40 years. Mr Al Fayed said he wanted to keep the pair's "spirit alive" through the statue.
After the death of
Michael Jackson, Al-Fayed announced that they had already been discussing plans to build a memorial statue of the singer.
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