Harrods

Harrods
legal form	Privately owned, Qatar Holding
founding	1834 by Charles H. Harrod
Seat	Brompton Road ; London , England
Number of employees	~ 5000 ; ( FY 2008/2009)
Branch	retail trade
Website	www.harrods.com

Harrods is the most famous department store in London . It is one of the most famous, largest (almost 100,000 m² sales area) and most exclusive department stores in the world. The building is located on Brompton Road in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea to the west of the city center.

history

Harrods, London

The company was founded by Charles Henry Harrod in 1834 and relocated to Knightsbridge in 1849 . In December 1883 the building was completely destroyed by fire and was rebuilt between 1894 and 1903 in its current form in the style of eclecticism .

Brompton Road with Harrods department store at dusk

Harrod's Stores Ltd. dated August 7, 1903

Back of the share from 1903 with a representation of the department store and a listing of the departments

When it gets dark, the building is illuminated by 11,500 lamps.

In 1931 the company was a public company and was included in the FT 30 index .

From 1959 to 1994 Harrods was part of the House of Fraser group of companies .

Since 1974 was the department store Target of three attacks of the IRA . Six people were killed in the last attack on December 17, 1983 .

owner

In 1985 the department store was bought by Mohamed Al-Fayed , but it remained associated with the House of Fraser group of companies until 1994 .

In May 2010, Al-Fayed sold the department store to the investor Qatar Holding , Qatar for an estimated 1.7 billion euros .

Range of offers

The grocery department on the ground floor is particularly well-known with its so-called “Food Halls” and their various Art Nouveau furnishings . Also famous is the lighting on the facade, which consists of around 12,000 light bulbs , of which the in-house electricians have to change around 300 every day.

The nearest station within the Piccadilly Line of the London Underground 's Knightsbridge . Here - in the street called "Hans Crescent", which has been traffic-calmed since 2004 - a separately signposted subway entrance leads directly to one of the entrances to the department store.

Even if the department store is one of the most expensive shopping opportunities in London, it is open to everyone. A prerequisite for this, however, is an appropriate external appearance, so that, for example, those who wear rucksacks are advised by the security staff that they have to carry them in their hands and not on their backs. It is also forbidden to wear conspicuous, subcultural clothing (e.g. punk or heavy metal fan). In addition, young people are not allowed to go in groups and are only allowed to enter the store through one of the four entrances. Harrods is as popular among tourists as the KaDeWe in Berlin; after Parliament and Big Ben , it is the third most visited in London.

Former purveyor to the court

The former company logo with the four coats of arms of members of the "Royal Family", which emphasized the status of purveyors to the court at that time.

Harrods on the corner of Hans Crescent and Brompton Road: the four “Royal Warrants” used to hang on the empty vertical surface.

Harrods was until 2001 purveyor for

Queen Elizabeth II
Prince Philip, Duke of Edinburgh as a gentlemen's outfitter
Charles Mountbatten-Windsor, Prince of Wales as a gentleman's outfitter and saddler
Queen Elizabeth - the Queen Mother - with china and glassware

The purveyor status gave Harrods the right to put the coats of arms - the so-called Royal Warrants - of each of these four members of the royal family on the facade of the department store. The same applied to the management of the Royal Warrants with the addition “By Appointment to Her…” on the stationery, the packaging or in combination with other Harrods Group emblems .

Harrods received this title from Prince Philip in 1956, among others. On December 21, 2001, however, Prince Philip's privilege was withdrawn from the department store "due to significant changes in trade relations with Harrods".

According to public speculations, this withdrawal of the coat of arms and purveyor status was connected with the fact that Mohamed Al-Fayed often claimed in newspaper and TV interviews that the Duke of Edinburgh - "with his German ancestry and with his Nazi views " - as a driving force, conspiratorial force was responsible for the death of his son and the princess.

As a result of the ducal order, Al-Fayed had the other three - still existing and not withdrawn - royal coats of arms removed from the department store facade and burned them in 2011 in the course of the publication of Unlawful Killings on his property. Since 1997 - according to unnamed sources at court - none of the royals have been shopping at Harrods or have purchased goods from there. The current department store name is only "Harrods". The former location suffix "Knightsbridge" is also no longer used.

In the basement of the department store there was a commemorative fountain dedicated to Lady Diana and Dodi Fayed . This fountain was uninstalled in May 2018.

Princess Diana with her last partner Dodi Fayed
Memorial Shrine at Harrods

Innocent Victims , 2005

Branches

Harrods, Buenos Aires

Harrods Furniture Depository near Hammersmith Bridge in London

In 1912, the first Harrods store was also opened in Buenos Aires , Argentina. This became independent in the 1940s and continued to operate under the name Harrods. The building is currently (2016) empty and is not used as a shopping center.

Harrods currently has several branches around the world. From September to January there is a 200 m² shop in a Deutsche Bank branch on Friedrichstrasse in Berlin . There is also a branch on the Queen Elizabeth 2 cruise ship and at Heathrow Airport in London .

The Harrods branch located in the terminal of Vienna-Schwechat Airport was closed in 2003, as was the one at Frankfurt Airport. Negotiations are currently taking place for a new branch in Vienna City (1st district) near the Graben (Vienna) . A Harrods shopping mile was built in Porto Cervo on Sardinia for the summer of 2013.