Selfridges - the mark up….who shops there?

[Hels20]

Now - I used to love Selfridges. Shopped there a lot in my 20s and still love to
pop in there for make up etc and browse their clothes. Today, I needed to buy some shoes as I have recently developed arthritis and wanted some lower heels. Found a pair that did the job and they were £550! A lot of money! I then went on to a luxury fashion site and found they were being sold for £450 on the site AND they were also offering 20% off. So in total - a nearly £190 difference. I really couldn’t believe it….

maybe it was just a one off - but I thought (apart from in sale times) that designer goods had a set price - ie it didn’t matter where you got them from. It seems I was wrong. Anyone else got any similar experience?

Yes it's sometimes more expensive but I don't find it by a huge amount more so. I still shop there as can have stuff delivered at my specified convenience. Sale shoes are good there too. Good for gifts if in a rush. It has its purposes.

Yes, designer items do have a RRP, but they can be offered at a lower price at the retailers discretion. It is often due to whatever the terms of contract between brand and store are. Often, some labels are sold with the caveat that they cannot be included in promotions/discounts. Additionally, someone like Selfridges has many concessions which the brand(s) manage themselves. This is also why they do not discount their items even though the same item might be cheaper in another store or online multi-retailer.

As an aside, Selfridges, since the Westons sold it, is in serious financial trouble. I understand that when its current owners took over, they felt discounting was beneath them and not what their customers were looking for. The average price point also rose too. This plan of action hasn't worked too well for them.

It's absolutely awful now. I used to love a wander round (and the food hall!) but it's just a tourist trap these days. Nobody is really buying anything, just looking at ridiculously expensive stuff.

It's a lovely shop though to be fair and I have ordered a few things and they come beautifully packaged so I guess some people don't care about the money and also a lot of people don't check prices . They just buy from somewhere they trust .

I live close to Selfridges and don’t bother to shop there any longer. Will pass through for a squirt of perfume, but can’t recall the last time I bought something. I buy everything online because of the discounts you mentioned. I think shopping in C London, in general, has really lost its cachet.

I had the same thing in john lewis, a man's jacket from Gant £250. I went on the Gant website the same jacket 50% off in the sale, I went back to J L to look a week later, and they still had it at £250. It pays to look around.

The wealthy Russians, Arabs and Chinese don't have the time, inclination or need to shop around.

They can afford it. Easily. Many times over.

They nip into Selfridge's and get everything they want, in one place, then have someone haul it all back to their apartment, hotel.... or even shipped back to their home country.

Then when someone there asks where they got it from, they'll say "Selfridge's in London" and all their uber-wealthy social circle will approve, and want to come here and shop themselves.

These people do not whore themselves on websites, not even look at prices.

@penjil exactly .. the people that don't look at prices . It's such a nice shop and everything is there for instant gratification.

Anyone can use Google to find stuff cheaper but they don't care !

Yes, I have found this - trainers for my son could be bought for £100 cheaper elsewhere.
The last few times I have visited I haven’t found anything of interest.

Birmingham Selfridges has some good discounts from time to time.

I wanted my favourite perfume last summer. Went to Selfridges ..£150. Same shopping mall at another retailer £60

I think the changing demographic that @penjil refers to also has had a big impact on what they stock. I remember in the late 90s/early 2000s (which I appreciate is quite long ago now), they (London) had a 'youth' section on the ground floor where you could get high street/high end high street brands. I'm sure there was a Topshop concession plus things like Karen Millen as well as cheaper make up brands. I haven't been round the women's clothes for a while but I doubt they have that these days and instead major on the obviously designer brands with massive logos etc

They do charge a premium pretty much across the board. You can almost always get the items cheaper elsewhere.
Good brands also seem to disappear after a while. They used to stock Rimowa and Shiseido, but no longer.
Weirdly, Harrods staff seem friendlier.

They definitely did used to stock high street womenswear brands. I have a Warehouse dress that they mail ordered to me and it was packaged in a Selfridges bag.

A friend of mine works for a Chinese woman who spends tens of thousands of pounds in Selfridges every month. God knows how she keeps finding things to buy, or has space to put all the stuff (even in her giant apartment).

I hate Selfridges. It’s like they’ve gone out of their way to make being there the worst sensory experience they can.

So true. Las time I walked in and then straight out again. And I've been there many times in my life and I still can't navigate it at all. It's just like some weird smelly noisy black hole.

This 100pc

This is sad. We used Selfridges quite frequently when I was a child as we were only a short bus ride away. My mum used to take me there to get my hair cut then we’d have a look around and get an ice-cream sundae in the Soda Fountain. Every Christmas I would see Father Christmas and Uncle Holly there. Haven’t been there for many, many years but looking at their website and the prices I don’t think I’ll be visiting again.

Exactly this. It used to have a good mixture - haute couture but also high street brands. It does still have some of both but the crazy-expensive designer bling predominates.

Doesn’t make sense - most of the 0.01% who can drop £20k on a watch or jacket are going to go to Bond Street and buy it from the designer, not a department store.

Their beauty range is pretty good to be fair. They often get exclusives.

You can go to individual stores in Bond Street etc. but the time wasted doing so is what department stores count on. Pre internet shopping boom I'd quite often try and knock off a good chunk of Christmas shopping in a higher end department store spree (Harvey Nichols was my go-to). Much easier than going store to store, and a glass of fizz mid way through was a nice treat.

I used to love going to the central Manchester Selfridges as a teenager in the 2000s. The whole of the lower ground floor was a food hall (now no more!) and you used to be able to get fresh juices, a bite to eat, a coffee etc. Absolutely loved it - we felt so grown up going there instead of Starbucks.

The top floor had high street brands like Topshop, Kookai, Warehouse etc. now their version of that is upper high street - Claudie Pierlot, Sandro etc. Not accessible for more teenagers.

I occasionally go in there when I am back in the city, but designer concessions now dominate - the ground floor used to be the most buzzing beauty hall, now it’s Chanel and Dior concessions, and a bit soulless, frankly. Such a shame.

But that's my point. You couldn't do that now, because the high-end but accessible brands are mostly gone (other than in the shoe department, but even that is declining).

Unless you're an exceptionally generous friend, presumably your Christmas shopping wasn't all Fendi bags and Cartier tanks? I just don't believe that most people buying that kind of item - the sort of thing that now predominates at Selfridges - buy it from a department store, when Bond Street is a few metres away. The retail experience is incomparable. Selfridges, as a PP said, is just a horrible sensory experience now.

Who is going to buy their Fendi bag in a noisy hell-hole with limited choice, when there's a whole Fendi shop down the road? There are lots of gawkers, but there is never anyone actually buying in those expensive designer concessions at Selfridges. And while, with the mark ups, they don't need a high volume of sales to break even, they still have to cover the costs of a massive building on Oxford Street and a lot of staff.

The sales were dire this year too, both Black Friday and the Christmas sale. Harris’s good Hall kicks the shit out of Selfridges one too, and is now far cheaper.