Recession hadn’t halted the relentless progress of the rich in Chicago any more than it had held back the “Robber Barons” of New York. Chicago manufactured, packed and shipped the thing that mattered most—foodstuffs—across America and over the ocean to Europe. By the end of the 1870s, the city was deafened by the sound of building as offices, warehouses and transport terminals sprang up alongside the shantytowns that housed the rising flood of immigrants from Europe. The building boom was financed by the new elite, who were also busy building themselves palatial new homes, their principal requirements being that the result should be impressively large, have the requisite ballroom, and not be anywhere near the city’s riffraff—Chicago was infamous for its brothels and booze. The city’s rich colonized their own safe havens, settling in Calumet Avenue, Prairie Avenue or a little farther south in “Millionaire’s Row” on Michigan Avenue.
Field himself moved his family (young Marshall II now had a baby sister called Ethel) to Prairie Avenue, commissioning the celebrated architect Richard Morris Hunt to build him a merchant’s mansion. Unusually for a Chicago commission, Field asked Hunt to “keep it simple.” Hunt, more used to clients such as the Vanderbilts (for whom he designed “The Breakers,” their faux-Italian Renaissance palace in Newport, at a cost of eleven million dollars), was unable to exercise his imagination. Unlike the ostentatious Pullman home, or Cyrus McCormick’s vast and awesomely unattractive house nearby, Hunt’s three-story dwelling for Field was a model of restraint. It was also the first house in Chicago to be wired for electricity, which shone brightly on the yellow silk-covered walls. Even so, the house was always described as being bleak and cold. It wasn’t a happy home.
Mrs. Marshall Field could have become one of Chicago’s leading hostesses, but she seems never to have had the inclination. A gentle soul married to a man with absolutely no sense of fun, she was prone to chronic migraines and spent an increasing amount of time recuperating in the South of France, more than happy to leave Chicago’s social set to compete for the exalted role of leader. That honor went to Bertha Honoré Palmer, who became the undisputed “Queen of Chicago” just as the Mrs. Astor was the “Queen of New York.”
Young Bertha (who had been just twenty-one when she married forty-four-year-old Potter) had youth, good looks, quantities of money courtesy of her indulgent husband, and a sister married to President Ulysses S. Grant’s son Frederick, which gave her a cachet that money couldn’t buy.
Bertha adored jewels—her favorites being diamonds and pearls—and she soon had a prodigious quantity of them, seemingly often wearing them all at once. Potter enjoyed this visible display of excess as much as Bertha did, being prone to remarking fondly, “There she stands, with half a million on her back.” Actually, it was more like half a million round her neck and another half million on her head: one of Bertha’s famous “dog collars” was set with 2,268 pearls, while her favorite tiara contained 30 diamonds, each as big as a quail’s egg.
Given that she was pin-thin and petite, Mrs. Palmer stood up very well to the rigors of running Chicago society, which she controlled with a rod of iron. At grand functions such as the entrance march to her annual Charity Ball, Mrs. Palmer was flanked by the ladies who acted as her deputies and who ran the various “subdivisions” of the city. The Palmers themselves ruled the North Side from their awesome turreted castle where, in a show of extreme control, there were no exterior doorknobs—guests had to wait until a servant opened the door—and where the privileged few could ride to the upper floors in the first elevators installed in a private home in Chicago.
Mrs. Palmer had a great fondness for Worth gowns and for Paris, where she maintained a home, just as she did in London, where the Palmers held court in Carlton House Terrace. Perhaps it was just as well they had three large houses, for they owned an awful lot of art. Always at the cutting edge of fashion, Mrs. Palmer was an early patron of the Impressionists. In one single year she famously bought twenty-five Monets, and she loved Renoir’s Acrobats at the Cirque Fernando so much that it traveled with her wherever she went.
By 1877, Bertha had only to step over to Field & Leiter to buy a new gown by Worth, the store’s Paris agent having bought twelve models for Chicago’s first private orders from the great man. But before they could be delivered, the store went up in smoke. People mourned its loss as they would have done the death of a relative, and the Chicago Tribune produced a fine obituary: “The destruction of St. Peter’s in Rome could hardly have aroused a deeper interest than the destruction of this splendid dry goods establishment … this was the place of worship for thousands of our female fellow-citizens. It was the only shrine at which they paid their devotions.”
Yet another temporary site was hastily found and while Field and Leiter anxiously debated their future, the Singer Manufacturing Company started to clear the rubble and rebuild. Confident that it was the best site in town, Field himself suggested not only moving back in but also buying the building. Levi Leiter was reluctant. He didn’t understand the new retail business; he was a traditional wholesaling man. Wholesale, he argued, was less complex to run and made much more money—in 1872 retail sales stood at $3.1 million against wholesaling at $14 million. Field disagreed. The cachet of running a prime retail site was what kept the wholesale customers loyal—one was inseparable from the other. Eventually the partners offered $500,000 to Singer, who immediately rejected it. It was $700,000 “take it or leave it.” Field was in New York on a business trip when Singer contacted Leiter for his final offer. Brusque and stubborn to the end, Leiter wouldn’t budge, losing the prime site to the ambitious Scottish duo, Sam Carson and John Pirie, who leased it at $70,000 a year. Field was furious and rushed back from New York to salvage the mess. He won—as he always did—but it cost him Singer’s original purchase price of $700,000 plus an extra $100,000 to buy Carson Pirie Scott out of their lease. He didn’t forgive Levi Leiter and he didn’t forget.
Field & Leiter moved into their new, spacious six-story building in November 1879 where five hundred assistants on the floor served Chicago’s best customers. Field used to say it was “everyone’s store,” and everyone came, from the celebrated actress Lillie Langtry—famous for her sexual exploits in England—to Carrie Watson, who knew a thing or two about sex herself, given that she ran Chicago’s most exclusive brothel. In keeping with the style of her “house”—a three-story mansion with more than twenty bedrooms plus a bowling alley and billiard room in the basement for those waiting to be served—Carrie’s girls were beautifully dressed. They “received” in ball gowns, fluttered their fans in the most charming way and peeled off layers of exquisite underwear, all of which made Carrie Watson one of Field & Leiter’s most valued customers.
There was no such excitement in the basement of Field’s Market Street wholesale building where young Harry Selfridge had just started his new job. Such thrills as he got were from reading the newspapers—which he devoured daily—or from visits to the theater where he watched stars such as Lillie Langtry while nurturing dreams of his future. He didn’t have long to wait. Within the year, his boss, the immaculately dressed and fastidious John Shedd, sent Selfridge “on the road” selling lace. Shedd, who would stay with Marshall Field throughout his career, ultimately becoming president on Field’s death in 1906, had joined the business as an enthusiastic wholesaling junior in 1871. He was organized, methodical, and a gifted salesman who loved beautiful things. When Selfridge joined, Mr. Shedd was running the lace department, one of the most profitable in the division. Shedd and Selfridge would become the two men who between them revolutionized the firm.
The Field & Leiter “linemen,” as they were known, were legendary. They were given a budget to “entertain” alongside their suitcase of samples and swatches, and if they surpassed their target of $100,000 each year they received a bonus. No one knows if Selfridge hit the target, but we do know he hated the job. After three years he had had enough. Harry Selfridge—always urbane—knew he was an urban man and wanted t
o live in Chicago. Requesting a transfer to work in retail, he moved over to the State Street store in 1883.
It has always been said that Harry Selfridge worked on the shop floor, but his son, Gordon, claimed he never did: “My father did not start in retail as a clerk. He was in unofficial charge of the advertising department.” Perhaps that is why Field—while acknowledging that Selfridge was articulate and in tune with the media—never thought of him as a true merchant. That accolade was reserved for Mr. Shedd, already on the path to becoming “heir apparent.” Selfridge was the store’s “ideas man” and if those ideas made money, that was all well and good. Selfridge took his role as copywriter seriously. His copy seems dated now, but for the time it was enormously refreshing. Field ads didn’t lie; they were always honest, perhaps a touch self-important—but above all, they were reassuring about quality, value, respect, and commitment to service. As Chicago boomed, the message went out to the public that Field & Leiter was a comforting place to be.
For all Field’s lack of charisma, he was polite, calm, and dignified, exuding a quiet confidence. He prided himself on caring for the customer and drilled his staff never to hustle or harass. Walking through the store one day he found an assistant quibbling with a customer over a return. “Give the lady what she wants,” Field remarked. He was equally calm when ousting Leiter, his partner of fourteen years, who exited the business with a check for nearly three million dollars, leaving Harry Selfridge to write ads that announced the store would henceforth be called “Marshall Field & Co.”
Levi Leiter took to his forced retirement rather well, moving his wife and family to Washington and setting up home in a Dupont Circle mansion, where he nurtured his property portfolio while his wife nurtured marital ambitions for her three young daughters. Despite their handsome dowries, not even Mrs. Leiter could have predicted the glittering future of her eldest daughter Mary, who married George Curzon in 1895. When her husband subsequently took up his appointment as Viceroy of India, Lady Curzon, as Vicereine, occupied the most important position ever held by an American in the British Empire.
Back in Chicago, Harry Selfridge would prove Levi Leiter wrong. The future lay not in wholesaling but in retailing. The real consumer revolution had begun.
3.
The Customer Is Always Right
“Remember always that the recollection of quality remains long after the price is forgotten.”
—HARRY GORDON SELFRIDGE
HARRY SELFRIDGE HAD A DEEP-ROOTED BELIEF IN THE power of advertising. To him, it was the engine that drove the retail machine, and his faith in it never wavered. Through good times and bad, the Selfridge policy was to spread the word through the media.
His first aim was to get people through the doors. “Getting them in” became his mantra. Once they were inside he believed in giving them comfort, courteous service and, above all, entertainment as an enticement to buy. If, having reeled them in like fish on a line, he lost some, he reckoned he could always catch them another time.
Harry was brash, bold, impulsive, and imaginative, qualities that did not go down well with Marshall Field’s incumbent retail general manager, J. M. Fleming, to whom Harry was appointed as personal assistant in 1885. Harry’s brief from Marshall Field was to propose—and subsequently implement—new ideas. Mr. Fleming was of the old school, formal in manner, traditional in outlook, bowing to every ritual and rule that had “built the business.” Harry thought him stubborn and old-fashioned.
A year or so earlier, Harry Selfridge had been to New York—a trip apparently taken at his own expense by way of a working holiday and one that had a profound effect on him. He noted the uniformed greeters at Lord & Taylor, saw the crowds hunting for bargains at Macy’s and admired the fashionable clothes at the Bloomingdale brothers’ East Side Bazaar. All had benefited in one way or another from the influence of Alexander Stewart (though his own business had, after his death in 1876, subsequently collapsed). Convinced he could make his own mark on Marshall Field, Harry looked at what was already there and set about improving it.
He had a good base on which to build. Field himself had embraced the era’s new technology, removing the old-fashioned gas lamps and wiring the six-story store for electricity in 1882. He had even installed telephone lines, albeit only five for the whole building. The store also had a fine reputation in the community. Field’s promoted their “fair price” policy, always claiming they offered good value.
Realistically, very few consumers had the faintest idea how much goods were worth. For most, the acquisition of nonessential goods was such a new adventure that if they had the money, they willingly paid the price. In many instances—particularly for luxury items—the store buyers were encouraged to set prices at what they thought the market could afford to pay. Prices were intended to cover all costs and they included an additional 6 percent paid to the wholesale division—from which the retail store sourced most of its goods—and a charge levied by Mr. Field against the rental value of the space each department occupied. When all these costs were covered, departmental heads then had sales targets to meet, above which they made a bonus.
The store was also becoming much more service-oriented. Free local deliveries had already been introduced, as had a “storing” point where parcels were kept while customers browsed in other departments. There were still only two elevators, but each was as comfortable as a private Pullman car, with plush bench seats, carved paneling and ornate mirrors. Otherwise customers used the impressive sweeping staircase that was twenty-three feet wide and easily accommodated the “back-bustle and train” dresses then in fashion. Staff called customers “Madam” or “Sir.” They weren’t allowed to hustle for sales, eat, spit, swear, or chew tobacco on the shop floor. In reality, they enjoyed the status their jobs conferred as much as customers enjoyed the status of shopping there. But the refined atmosphere was too rarefied to suit Selfridge who, at twenty-nine, was young enough to crave change, and astute enough to know it was waiting to happen.
His first target was lighting. Despite the large central skylight and new electric lighting, the store, replete with vast amounts of mahogany paneling, was gloomy, so he quadrupled the number of hanging globes. Then, maximizing the wonder of electricity, uniquely for Chicago (and very possibly any other retail store in the world), he lit the windows when the store was closed at night, bringing evening “window-shopping” to the city. Considering communication crucial, he increased the number of telephone lines, installing a central switchboard operated by female telephonists, with extensions into each major department.
Next he turned his attention to the fixtures. Shopping, he reasoned, should be both a visual and a tactile experience, one best enjoyed in a moment of private self-indulgence and enjoyment and not requiring a sales clerk to unlock a cabinet. So he put central displays in the aisles, folding stock on tables so women could touch and feel a cashmere shawl or a pair of fine kid gloves that they were thinking of buying. He lowered the old-fashioned wall units and ripped out the steep shelves, installing instead back fixtures that staff could reach without ladders. He also reduced the height of the counters, bringing them down to customer-friendly levels, with deep drawers for storage underneath to save staff wasting time making trips to the stockroom.
Field may not have appreciated the significance of these moves, but Chicago’s acclaimed architect Daniel Burnham certainly did. Burnham—best known today for his iconic Flatiron Building in New York—was the man who helped shape late nineteenth-century Chicago. He also became Selfridge’s hero. Harry—whose greatest hobby was collecting architectural drawings—called him “Uncle Dan,” and it was he who later helped visualize the Oxford Street store. Just after Burnham’s firm had completed a massive new development for Marshall Field & Co. in 1908 (a dream job that largely created the building that exists today), he wrote to Selfridge in London with news of their solution to the shop-fitting: “the fixture question, which I am sure has been solved in this, as in no other store in the world,
owes much to your early efforts.”
There was no stopping the man staff called “mile-a-minute Harry.” He printed souvenir booklets for the 1884 presidential conventions held in the city and invited all the delegates to visit the store, reminding them that their shopping would be delivered to their hotels. When the city began to pay schoolteachers by check, he set up a special in-store bank to cash them—ignoring criticism from the media that he was enticing teachers to “spend more freely in the store as they had cash in their purses.”
Ever the publicist, he also more than quadrupled the store’s newspaper advertising budget and booked Chicago’s first-ever full-page advertisements. The advertisements always had a story—aggressive advertising never interested Harry Selfridge. He preferred to use persuasion, and the text of the advertisements was peppered with his quaint, quirky, and deeply felt moral opinions. Nor would he use lurid headlines or false offers on prices. A typical trick of the day was to advertise delivery of “a special line at exceptional prices.” When customers arrived, they invariably found that what they wanted had mysteriously sold out but that there was something similar at a higher price. Harry Selfridge never endorsed such trickery. He never promised more than the store could provide and he focused on “service with a smile.”
Shopping, Seduction & Mr. Selfridge Page 4