Department store

A department store is a retail establishment which satisfies a wide range of the consumer's personal and residential durable goods product needs; and at the same time offering the consumer a choice of multiple merchandise lines, at variable price points, in all product categories. Department stores usually sell products including clothing, furniture, home appliances, toys, cosmetics, gardening, toiletries, sporting goods, do it yourself, paint and hardware and additionally select other lines of products such as food, books, jewellery, electronics, stationery, photographic equipment and baby and pet needs. Certain department stores are further classified as discount stores. Discount department stores commonly have central customer checkout areas, generally in the front area of the store. Department stores are usually part of a retail chain of many stores situated around a country or several countries. United Kingdom Bennett's of Irongate in Derby is the oldest department store recorded in the UK, and possibly the world, founded in 1734. It still stands to this day, trading in the same building. Kendals (formerly Kendal Milne & Faulker) in Manchester is the also one of the first department stores founded in the UK and is still known to many of its customers as Kendal's, despite its 2005 name change to House of Fraser. The Manchester institution dates back to 1836 but had been trading as Watts Bazaar since 1796. At its zenith the store had buildings on both sides of Deansgate linked by a subterranean passage "Kendals Arcade" and an art nouveau tiled food hall. The store was especially known for its emphasis on quality and style over low prices giving it the nickname "the Harrods of the North", although this was due in part to Harrods acquiring the store in 1919. Other large Manchester stores included Paulden's (currently Debenhams) and Lewis's (now a Primark). London has a massive department store called Harrods By 1956, Lewis's had the largest stores in the provinces of the UK. It started in Liverpool in 1856. Lewis's experimented in new ways of advertising (such as flooding the basement of the Manchester store to create a mini Venice.) Since 1856 it had stores in Manchester (1877), Liverpool (1856), Birmingham , Glasgow, Liverpool (The Bon Marche), Leeds, Hanley, London (Selfridges), Bristol and Leicester . The group's first and final store, in Liverpool, went into administration in 2007 and was purchased as a going concern by Vergo Retail Limited, enabling the store to continue trading under the Lewis's brand.[2] In February 2010 Vergo Retail announced that this store would close by June[3] but, following Vergo going into administration, the date of closure was announced as 29 May.[4] also the department store is often described as a collected shops under one roof.it located in the heavy traffic or shopping areas

[edit] France

Le Bon March department store in Paris, 1867 Aristide Boucicaut founded Le Bon March in Paris in 1838, and by 1852 it offered a wide variety of goods in "departments" inside one building. Goods were sold at fixed prices, with guarantees that allowed exchanges and refunds. By the end of the 19th century, Georges Dufayel, a French credit merchant, had served up to three million customers and was affiliated with La Samaritaine, a large French department store established in 1870 by a former Bon March executive. [edit] Ireland As Le Bon March evolved into a department store in the early 1850s, Delany's New Mart opened in 1853 in Dublin, Ireland on Sackville Street (now O'Connell Street). Unlike others, Delany's had not evolved gradually from a smaller shop on site. Thus it would claim to be the first purpose built Department Store in the world. The word department store had not been invented at that time and thus it was called the "Monster House". Acquired by Limerick man, Michael J Clery in 1883, both the store and Imperial Hotel located in its upper floors were completely destroyed in the 1916 Easter Rising. However the store reopened in 1922, this time across numerous floors, as the famous Clerys department store that stands today, housed in a modern neoclassical building based on Selfridges of London. [edit] Australia David Jones (Australia) was started by David Jones, a Welsh merchant who met Hobart businessman Charles Appleton in London. Appleton had established a store in Sydney in 1825 and Jones subsequently established a partnership with Appleton, moved to Australia in 1835, and the Sydney store became known as Appleton & Jones. When the partnership was dissolved in 1838, Jones moved his business to premises on the corner of George Street and Barrack Lane, Sydney. Jones survived the depression of the 1840s, and by 1856 had retired from active management of the business. A few years later when the firm failed he returned to manage its affairs and in a few years had fully discharged all obligations to his creditors.[5] By 1887, the George Street store had been rebuilt and a mail order facility introduced. A factory was opened in Marlborough Street, Sydney to reduce reliance on imported goods. David Jones also makes a claim to be the oldest department store in the world still trading under its original name.[6]

[edit] New York City In New York City in 1846, Alexander Turney Stewart established the "Marble Palace" on the east-Broadway, between Chambers and Reade streets. He offered European retail merchandise at fixed prices on a variety of dry goods, and advertised a policy of providing "free entrance" to all potential customers. Though it was clad in white marble to look like a Renaissance palazzo, the building's cast iron construction permitted large plate glass windows. In 1862 Stewart built a department store on a full city block at Broadway and 9th Street, opposite Grace Church, with eight floors and nineteen departments of dress goods and furnishing materials, carpets, glass and china, toys and sports equipment, ranged around a central glasscovered court. Within a couple of decades, New York's retail center had moved uptown, forming a stretch of retail shopping from "Marble Palace" that was called the "Ladies' Mile". In 1858 Rowland Hussey Macy founded Macy's as a dry goods store. Benjamin Altman and Lord & Taylor soon competed with Stewart as New York's first department stores, later followed by "McCreary's" and, in Brooklyn, "Abraham & Straus." (The Straus family would be in the management of both Macy's and A&S.) Similar developments were under way in London (with Whiteleys), in Paris (with La Samaritaine) and in Chicago, where department stores sprang up along State Street, notably Marshall Field and Company, which was the second-largest department store in the world prior to converting to Macy's. In 1877, Wanamaker's opened in Philadelphia. Philadelphia's John Wanamaker performed a 19th century redevelopment to the former Pennsylvania Railroad terminal in that city and eventually opened a modern day department store in the building. [edit] Chicago Marshall Field & Company Marshall Field's was a department store in Chicago, Illinois that grew to become a major chain before being acquired by Macy's Inc. on August 30, 2005. Marshall Field's Served as a model for other departments stores in that it had exceptional customer service. Fields also brought with it the now famous Frango mints brand that became so closely identified with Marshall Field's and Chicago from the now defunct Frederick & Nelson Department store. Marshall Fields also had the Firsts, among many innovations by Marshall Field's. Field's had the first European buying office, which was located in Manchester, England, and the first bridal registry. The company was the first to introduce the concept of the personal shopper, and that service was provided without charge in every Field's store, right up to the chain's last days under the Marshall Field's name. It was the first store to offer revolving credit and the first department store to use escalators. Marshall Field's book department in the State Street store was legendary; it pioneered the concept of the "book signing." Moreover, every year at Christmas, Marshall Field's downtown store windows were filled with animated displays as part of the downtown shopping district display; the "theme" window displays became famous for their ingenuity and beauty, and visiting the Marshall Field's windows at Christmas became a tradition for Chicagoans and visitors alike, as popular a local practice as visiting the Walnut Room with its equally famous Christmas tree or meeting "under the clock" on State Street. [edit] Salt Lake City On March 1, 1869 Zion's Cooperative Mercantile Institution was opened in Salt Lake City as a new community store that became the first incorporated department store in America in 1870. A new 3-story brick and iron store was built in 1876, noted for its unique architecture and striped awnings.

This store was replaced by an enclosed shopping center in 1973, and the new Zion department store preserved the gilt-edged ornate facade of the old store. In 1999 the May Department Stores bought a 14-store ZCMI chain and changed its name to "Meier & Frank", a May property with eight stores in Oregon and Washington. Subsequently May Department Stores completed a merger with Federated Department Stores and the Meier & Frank brand ZCMI stores have become Macy's stores, effective late 2006. Set Up A Service For Department Stores If you can fix bicycles, department stores need your services badly! As it turns out, department stores need someone to assemble and tune their bikes on display, and they need someone to put the mountain of bikes which come in for refunds back in good working order. You do it in the back rooms of the stores, using your own tools. They will pay quite nicely for this service, up to $30 per hour, depending on how fast you can work. They don't pay you by the hour, or if they do offer to pay by the hour, you should politely decline. What you want is "piecework," in which they pay you for every bike that you process. The bikes they sell are not like the bikes in dedicated bicycle stores. Most department store bikes are the very least expensive that can be engineered to look and act as much as possible like the more expensive bikes. So, you have to act accordingly. While in a bicycle store, you can spend over an hour to assemble, tune and test a new bike, in a department store, that's the kiss of unemployment! They can't pay you very much per bike, so you've got to do what you can quickly. But it is a quandary. If ever a bike needed careful attention to protect the customer, it is a department store bike. So you've got to be expert enough to know what really matters and ignore the rest. For instance, if you are good at bike repair, you'll know that virtually every front derailleur cable eventually rusts solid. So a drop of oil is in order on each new bike. You'll also know that wheel bearings which are just a bit tight will loosen up by themselves with little damage, so those can be ignored. You know that overshifts into the spokes are bad news, and an expensive problem for the customer, so you'll make especially sure that the rear derailleur is well adjusted. And you'll know that wet brakes on steel rims are dangerous, so you'll try to convince the department store to let you install better brake pads on each bike. (Good luck!) As for refunds, most department stores get lots of them. They do not have a trained staff who can ask the customer what went wrong and take the time to make it right. They just give the money back. Often the returned bikes have wasted wheels, torn up grips, or broken cables, but are otherwise serviceable. The stores will pay you to quickly get those bikes up and running again. The stores will then resell the bikes at a slight discount as "out of the box" bikes.

You must be careful to communicate with the store people and do things the way they want them done. For instance, you can't just go pull a brake cable off the shelf to replace a broken one. They have computer-controlled inventory, and want to know where that cable went! Also available at the stores if you want to deal with it, are other product lines such as ping-pong tables, lawnmowers, and barbecue grills. Another income that can come your way out of this is that when customers who have purchased bikes need bike services, the personnel at the department stores may tell them to visit you. You may get literally dozens of new-bike assemblies and repairs per week from this source. These are nicer assemblies, because when people come to you with their bikes in boxes, you can offer two versions of the assembly: Quick and dirty like the stores want, or careful and slow at a higher price. Most people will opt for the more expensive assembly, if your price is reasonable. Some of the department store chains may have arrangements with companies who do in-store servicing or assemblies on a large scale, and others may try to have their untrained personnel do it. But others will be very glad indeed, if you simply walk in, talk with the sporting goods manager, and offer your services! The hardest store to get is the first one. Once you have one, you can approach all the others in your area as a professional. You can say, "I'm the guy who does the bikes for XYZ Company," and that'll be much more impressive to the sporting goods manager. But don't worry about that first store over-much. They're likely to say "yes" to anyone who appears sincere, intelligent and can help them take care of that mess of broken bikes in the back room! If you find that your community is already sewn up with an outfit that services the stores, this can be to your advantage. Get a job with them, let them take care of the paperwork while you just fix bikes, and enjoy the ride. You'll be paid weekly this way, and that can be nice compared to the way most stores pay. They like thirty to ninety-day invoices. And they never pay early.