The Selfridges: Your Luxury Shopping Empire Is Gambled Away By Dad скачать в хорошем качестве

The Selfridges: Your Luxury Shopping Empire Is Gambled Away By Dad

Harry Selfridge, the retail genius whose family built the "Selfridge's" luxury store empire, led a double life that would ultimately destroy everything. By day, he was London's merchant prince, revolutionizing how we shop, but by night, he transformed into a different person entirely—a gambling addict who couldn't resist the siren call of London's exclusive casinos. -------------------------- The “Old Money” British Family That Owns Half Of London (NOT The Windsors):    • The “Old Money” British Family That Owns H...   -------------------------- The Four Brothers Who Secretly Own Central London:    • The Four Brothers Who Secretly Own Central...   -------------------------- TIMESTAMPS: 0:00 Introduction 1:19 Chapter 1: Enter The Sumptuous Selfridge's 3:53 Chapter 2: The Start of Selfridge 8:18 Chapter 3: Harry’s Heyday 12:58 Chapter 4: The Downfall of Selfridge's 17:05 Chapter 5: The Decline of The Descendants -------------------------- Imagine you and your family have decided to visit our lovely capital to do some high-end luxury shopping. As you stroll down Oxford Street, you'll find yourself before an iconic building that forever changed the face of retail—Selfridges. Now, its grand facade still whispers tales of a golden age when Hollywood stars and royalty rubbed shoulders in its elegant halls. But behind these magnificent doors lies a story of spectacular rise and tragic fall. Selfridge's first threw open its lavish doors on March 15, 1909, welcoming a staggering crowd of 150,000 eager shoppers. Harry Gordon Selfridge, that audacious American entrepreneur with a flair for the dramatic, didn't just open a store; he transformed the dreary backwater of Oxford Street into London's sparkling retail Mecca. Between 1909 and 1929, Selfridge's revolutionized the very act of shopping - tossing out those stuffy glass cases that kept cosmetics and perfumes under lock and key. The architectural masterpiece housing this behemoth was built by legendary Chicago architect Daniel Burnham to the tune of tens of millions of dollars in today's money. Its steel frame construction created the perfect stage for window displays so mesmerizing they captured attention day and night. The marketing simply dazzled - while Edwardian London still ran on gas lamps, Selfridge's illuminated the evening sky with electric displays. He introduced seasonal sales to British shores, launched post-Christmas bargains, and brought Mother's Day to Britain. When Louis Blériot made history crossing the Channel, his aircraft found its temporary home inside the store. But Harry's gambling addiction would prove his undoing. The daily losses—five thousand pounds, equivalent to around three hundred thousand pounds in today's currency—revealed not just a gambling problem but the unraveling of an empire. By 1941, the man who had revolutionized British retail found himself stripped of his chairmanship, reduced to a pension of two thousand pounds per year. When Harry Gordon Selfridge died in 1947, his estate totaled just four thousand pounds - a devastating fall from his peak wealth of 65 million pounds. In the final irony, Selfridges sold for 4 billion pounds to a Thai conglomerate in 2021, while his descendants—working ordinary jobs, living ordinary lives—remained disconnected from the fruit of their grandfather's vision.