Selfridges’ new owners are taking control of a premium brand in a deal that will reunite the department store with its former boss.
The Weston family, owners of Selfridges since 2003, have sold their European department stores to a Thai conglomerate, Central Retail group, and an Austrian property company, Signa Holding, which already jointly own upmarket department stores in Italy, Germany and Denmark through a division run by the former Selfridges head Vittorio Radice.
The deal is the latest instalment of a rollercoaster history for the brand founded by a retail legend.
After more than 20 years rising through the ranks of the Marshall Field’s store in Chicago, in 1906 the US entrepreneur Harry Gordon Selfridge arrived in the UK with one intention: to found a great department store.
By some accounts, he was tempted to the UK by Liverpudlian Samuel J Waring Jr, who had built up a string of furnishings stores in London and wanted someone to run a neighbouring shop to his new Waring and Gillow outlet on Oxford Street.
It was initially intended to be called Selfridge-Waring store, but Selfridge took control when his partner hit financial difficulties and the new store opened in March 1909 under his name alone.
From the start, Selfridge embraced retail theatre and was determined his store would be “a civic centre, where friends can meet and buying is only a secondary consideration”. On the opening day, which drew enormous crowds, the store dazzled shoppers with live music, abundant floral displays and copious lighting in its airy halls.
The store sold a huge range of goods but, out of respect for his early business partner, not food or furnishings. It housed a library, a rest room for ladies, a picture gallery and a restaurant linked to a roof garden.
Selfridges set a new benchmark for UK department stores, ditching the tradition of housing staff above the shop and opting for large modern window displays more akin to advertising than the practice of piling up as many goods as possible.
When the store was awarded one of English Heritage’s blue plaques in 2003, the charity said: “It is largely thanks to Selfridge that Oxford Street remains the commercial heart of the West End.”
The store was originally much smaller than today but gradually extended backwards and westwards along Oxford Street through the 1920s, to consume almost two blocks. At one point it encompassed 100 departments, including a shooting range and an ice rink, and today houses a cinema.
From the late 1920s, Selfridges expanded across the UK, but these provincial stores were sold off to John Lewis in the 1940s and the founder was ousted from its board. The Oxford Street flagship was bought up by the Liverpool-based owners of the Lewis’s department stores group.
In 1965 Selfridges was bought by the Sears group, owner of a string of high street footwear brands including Dolcis and Saxone. It was used as the launchpad for the Miss Selfridge chain and opened a food hall and hotel, but gradually became fusty and unloved.
The department store was demerged from the ailing Sears in 1998, two years after appointing Radice, an Italian retail expert and previously the boss of Habitat, as managing director. Radice led a bold £100m reinvention of the store as a “house of brands”, taking it more upmarket. Just like Gordon Selfridge, he courted publicity with elaborate events, and launched the brand’s re-expansion outside London.
In 2003 Selfridges, then listed on the London Stock Exchange, was bought by the Canadian billionaire Galen Weston for more than £600m, just after Radice’s 2002 exit for an unsuccessful stint running Marks & Spencer’s furniture division.
The Westons, one of Canada’s richest families, first confirmed in June this year they may consider selling their European department stores after an approach by a mystery buyer.
The deal includes Selfridges’ four UK stores – in London, Birmingham and two in Manchester – as well as Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands. It also covers about £2bn of the chain’s prime property assets, including the freehold of its listed Oxford Street flagship store in London, but not the family’s Holt Renfrew department stores in Canada.
It is not clear why the Westons decided to sell during a pandemic. However, the auction began shortly after the death of Galen Weston, 80, head of the family. Central Retail group and Signa Holding are taking ownership just as the business is likely to require an influx of new funds.
In the year to February 2020, Selfridges’ sales rose by 7% to £1.97bn, but profits fell 10% to £88m. Since then, department stores, especially in London, have suffered from a drop in international travel, while their large expensive buildings continue to attract high property taxes and they have been forced to close for lengthy periods during high street lockdowns.
