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A simplified example report of some of the data we provide when credit checking a company. Insightful overlook on how businesses are performing in each part of the country. In alone , over , jobs were lost and over 16, shops closed. However, some retailers are still managing to succeed in the current climate, showing that with the right strategies and an innovative mindset, physical retail can still be profitable.
Over the past few years, Selfridges has gone from strength to strength, posting continued sales growth and maintaining excellent profit margins. Selfridges reported a strong Christmas , while competitor John Lewis reported a 2.
So what is Selfridges doing so differently, and can others emulate its success? It has not only invested in its website and mobile app, but also its Chinese language website to tap into a lucrative international market. Alongside this, it has improved how online orders are delivered both in the UK and internationally with its Selfridges Plus subscription service. This investment in delivery is an astute recognition of one of the major potential pain points for customers when shopping online: slow, expensive delivery.
This is proving to be a key way for online retailers to build loyalty, as seen with other similar successful schemes such as Amazon Prime and ASOS Premier. Alongside its dizzying array of goods, Selfridges also has an uncanny ability to sell the experience of shopping itself, which explains why the new marble-floored accessories hall in its London store comes with a seat circular bar and a Japanese flower market.
In a sign that department store competitors are closely watching and trying at least some of what Selfridges is doing, Saks Fifth Avenue also opened a FaceGym on the new second floor of its New York flagship in June.
In addition to streetwear, the retailer was also early to the clean and conscious living trends, partnering with the likes of Detox Kitchen and Canada Goose, which created exclusive fur-free jackets for the chain back in The company has been particularly successful at addressing international customers with translations, multilingual staff, foreign payment options, tax-free shopping services and digital tools that help visitors from abroad navigate its stores.
Selfridges is working closely with Crossrail, a large-scale public transport project in London that will shuttle millions of people to the Oxford Street area, many of whom will surely make their way to Selfridges. The retailer has also planted trees and built a marble bench and drinking fountain outside the new Duke Street entrance to its London store in a bid to create a plaza-like feel that is designed to both prettify the area and attract people to the store.
And in a year or two years, they might buy something from the food hall or meet a friend for a drink. And yet despite the strength of the strategy and the latest round of positive results, there may be limits to how much Selfridges can scale. Some , personal invitations had been sent out in the previous days and newspaper advertisements had asked everyone in the country to come to see the new store in its opening week. Selfridge's principle was that shopping should be enjoyable rather than a chore and The Times reported that the interior that first day was filled with masses of flowers and greenery as well as 'myriads of tiny globules suspended on threads, which reminded one of the snow that was falling outside'.
Orchestras were playing music 'apparently at every corner' and the showrooms were 'more airy and spacious - owing to the absence of dividing walls and partitions than those which are familiar to London eyes'. Everything anyone could conceivably want to buy seemed to be on display and The Times commented on 'the pleasant habit of the shop assistants in refraining from asking what they could do for one'.
As well as a post office, a theatre booking office, a library and an information bureau, there were galleries displaying works of art, a comfortable 'silence room' for resting, restaurants and a roof garden. Foreign visitors were provided with interpreters, and a trained nurse was on hand to administer first aid if it was needed. Gordon Selfridge was 51 when his store opened.
A dynamic American businessman who all his life thought big, he was born in Ripon, Wisconsin in and was denied his intended career in the US Navy by an accident of birth — he was fractionally too short to be admitted to the Annapolis naval academy. In his early twenties Selfridge joined what would become America's most famous department store, Marshall Field's in Chicago, as a junior clerk.
He rose swiftly to managerial level, was made a junior partner and was sent frequently on trips abroad.
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