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The Department Store Re-imagined: A new lease of life for one of the oldest retail formats

Lauretta Roberts
11 April 2023

The first reliably dated department store in the UK is said to have been Harding, Hobbs & Howell which opened on London’s Piccadilly in 1796. The first one globally that resembles the department store as we know it today is Le Bon Marché in the chic Left Bank quartier of Paris, which opened in 1836 and is still a thriving beehive of people, product and pleasure to this day.

Department Store

The world’s first department store – Harding, Howell & Co’s Grand Fashionable Magazine at 89 Pall Mall in St James’s, London.

Department stores changed the way we shopped forever. Instead of product being hidden away on shelves or in drawers behind a counter that served as a barrier between the customer and the merchandise, department stores encouraged people to touch product, to browse and to dwell in-store. This turned shopping from a chore into a pastime.

The heyday for department stores in the UK was the early half of the 20th Century when every town and city had at least one department store in its centre, often housed in an architecturally significant building.

However the arrival of out of town shopping in the 60s and 70s led to many disappearing and large chains such as Debenhams and House of Fraser took over many former independent stores. But some big names prevailed, in particular the luxury players such as Selfridges, Liberty, Harrods and Harvey Nichols. But they too were challenged in the early 2000s when online shopping arrived and players such as Matchesfashion and Net-A-Porter made a direct play for the luxury department store shopper.

Net-a-porter

Net-A-Porter was founded by former fashion journalist Natalie Massenet

But there was something about physical retail that refused to die. Yes, we lost Debenhams during the COVID-19 crisis, but in the post pandemic era a curious and unexpected thing has happened. The department store is undergoing a resurgence. Yes, some players remain challenged, but Selfridges goes from strength to strength (and was recently acquired by global giant Central Group and Signa for what is believed to have been around £4 billion) and Harrods is opening new stores dedicated to beauty, while Marks & Spencer is back on the up with increasing fashion and food sales and a burgeoning third-party brand strategy.

Even those retailers who are not traditional department stores are adopting significant aspects of the department store model and psyche and offering it to a new generation of customer. Retail giant NEXT is opening stores that bear a striking resemblance to department stores with beauty departments, homewares and cafés.

Frasers Group’s multi-brand luxury chain is opening flagship stores with beauty departments, food and beverage outlets and even in-store gyms. It seems unlikely any of them will be in-stalling in-store gyms or opening rooftops complete with a flamingo pool, as some of London’s department stores were known to have done in the earlier half of the 20th Century before we came to our senses on animal welfare, but this idea of spectacle is heavily borrowed from early department stores.

Across the country we are happily seeing some independent department stores springing back into life post-pandemic too. In the south coast town of Bournemouth, out of the ashes of its Debenhams store, Bobby’s has arisen. Or we should say, has been resurrected. Local developers have returned the historic store to its former glory and former name (it was originally known as Bobby’s before being taken over by Debenhams) and is using the store to showcase local brands and services and has painstakingly restored many of its original architectural features.

To celebrate this most historic and, at the same time, most resilient of retail formats, TheIndustry.fashion has teamed up with Klarna for Business on ‘The Department Store Re-imagined’ project. At the heart of this project is a landmark report that explores in detail the history of department stores, the role they play today and how they are set to be a fundamental part of the retail landscape of the future.

The Department Store Re-imagined

 

To download your FREE copy of this landmark report here.

 

To find out more about Klarna for Business here.

 

In proud partnership with

Klarna for Business

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