All Things for All People, Everywhere
This should be the motto for some human rights organisation, but no……….this is the motto for Harrods.
I shouldn’t love Harrods as much as I do. Every year I pay a little homage to this rather splendid store and it never fails to impress me. I suppose it’s not surprising really as it is the largest department store in the world, occupying 4.5 acres and with over one million square feet of selling space in over 330 departments. A retailers dream!
When I was a teenager I use to go to there with my friends, Kim and Karen, on the bus from Streatham. It was a big adventure. I had to buy something, and it had to be big enough to be put in to a green carrier bag with that famous yellow logo. If I could afford it I would buy my Nan’s Christmas Present there, and she would recycle the bag for months just so that she could tell all of her friends that her grand daughter ‘shopped at Harrods’.
This should be the motto for some human rights organisation, but no……….this is the motto for Harrods.
I shouldn’t love Harrods as much as I do. Every year I pay a little homage to this rather splendid store and it never fails to impress me. I suppose it’s not surprising really as it is the largest department store in the world, occupying 4.5 acres and with over one million square feet of selling space in over 330 departments. A retailers dream!
When I was a teenager I use to go to there with my friends, Kim and Karen, on the bus from Streatham. It was a big adventure. I had to buy something, and it had to be big enough to be put in to a green carrier bag with that famous yellow logo. If I could afford it I would buy my Nan’s Christmas Present there, and she would recycle the bag for months just so that she could tell all of her friends that her grand daughter ‘shopped at Harrods’.
When I first started out in retailing Harrods was held up as an example of how a department store should be run. We were sent along to visit the store for a day, with instructions to come back and make a report, suggesting ways that Allders of Sutton could become more like Harrods……..you can stop laughing now! I can only really remember two things about that day. For some obscure reason, the managers decided that we had to wear our uniform when we went on out visit. Even though it was quite warm we wore our coats so that our uniforms weren’t obvious; the logic was that Harrods may not like the ‘opposition’ in their store. In retrospect, they probably wouldn’t have considered us that much of a threat, however six teenagers with there coats buttoned up aroused enough suspicion to have us followed by a security guard.
The other thing I remember about our trip was the report we made when we got back; on our recommendation Allder’s put adverts in the stairwells and on the walls of the lifts. Not exactly ground-breaking stuff, but it made us feel good and justified a jolly to the world’s biggest department store.
Kx
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