What Brings Them There

Despite Britain's various economic ills, one thriving enterprise racked up record sales of over $60 million last year. This was Harrods department store, a venerable London institution, where a good portion of the total--some $14 million--was spent by non-British customers. Foreigners were so thick on the ground at Harrods earlier this month that, as Managing Director Alfred Spence recalls, "You were hard pressed to find English spoken in some departments." What brings them there is partly a feeling that shopping at Harrods is a dignified, particularly English experience.

Back in 1849, when Henry Charles Harrod opened his shop purveying tea, soap and candles in Knightsbridge Village, highway robberies were still common in the area. Today, Knightsbridge is one of London's swankiest sections and the most visible evidence of the tea merchant's modest business venture, a domed and terra cotta Victorian version of a Spanish castle, stands right in its midst. "Just about every visitor to London goes to Harrods," boasts the store's 31-year-old chairman, Sir Hugh Fraser, who succeeded his father two years ago. "It ranks with Buckingham Palace and the Tower." Now Western Europe's largest department store, Harrods is the pride of the House of Fraser Ltd. (1967 sales: $243 million), the chain which bought the eight-store Harrods group for about $100 million in 1959.

Dial-a-Cabbage. Vast areas of Harrods' 13 acres of floor space stand empty, mysteriously transmuting the hustle-bustle of commerce into an air of stately calm. A discreet staff of 5,000, meticulously trained to avoid the abrupt "May I help you" approach, murmurs the softest sell on either side of the Atlantic.

Above all, the store lives up to its cable address, "Everything, London." The variety of quality goods and services it offers is unequaled in the world. It sells anything from 200 kinds of cheese to a $25,000 French Erard piano decorated with carved brass. The store will calmly take an order for a baby elephant--a $4,800 present for U.S. Republican Ronald Reagan from a friend--or a head of cabbage requested by telephone in the dead of night. It can find the Scottish piper wanted to pipe in the haggis or hire the entire regimental band of the Coldstream Guards; it can arrange a 1,000-guest party or a richly refined funeral. The store's export department, which grossed over $7 million last year, has sent gooseberries to Saudi Arabia, fresh flowers for a wedding in Nigeria and smoked kippers to a homesick Englishman in Ceylon.

Bunko Anyway. Reaching out for the newly affluent swinging set closer to home, the dowager of Knightsbridge underwent some startling changes during the last couple of years. They seem to have paid off. "The illusion that Harrods' customers were all duchesses was always bunko anyway," says a titled store executive. Mahogany displays were painted a brilliant cerise, truly modern furniture was stocked next to the Louis XV and Chippendale. But foremost among efforts to rejuvenate itself is the store's "Way In" boutique, where the Rolling Stones belt out background music. Since it opened last year, customers spent an astonishing $2.2 million on such way-out paraphernalia as see-through dresses and ties with tinkling jingle bells.

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