Department store

The US Census Bureau's NAICS (North American Industry Classification System) defines department stores as retail establishments engaged in retailing a wide range of new products with no single predominant merchandise line. To be considered a department store, an establishment would provide products including apparel, furniture, appliances and home furnishings, and select other lines of products such as paint, hardware, toiletries, cosmetics, photographic equipment, jewelry, toys, and sporting goods.

Certain types of department stores are further classified as Discount department stores. The US Census describes Discount department stores as having central customer checkout areas, generally in the front of the store.

Thus, in the United States, retail brands and companies such as Dillard's, Federated Departments Stores, Sears, J.C. Penney, and Nordstrom would be considered department stores. Retail brands such as K-Mart, Value City, Ross Stores, Target (some formats), and Wal-Mart (some formats) would be discount department stores.

Other general merchandise retail establishments that combine a general line of groceries and the other product lines characteristic of department stores are considered Warehouse Clubs or Supercenters. Warehouse clubs require a nominal annual membership fee, while supercenters do not. Sam's Club (a Wal-Mart owned brand) and Costco are examples of warehouse clubs. Meijer's and Wal-Mart's Supercenters typify the supercenter.

Once prominent local businesses, nearly all independent department stores in the United States have either closed or been purchased by one of the major department store chains.

History

North America

Though the Hudson's Bay Company of Canada (which began operations in 1670) was the first store with departments, it is not clear when it could be classified as a department store. No Hudson's was not a department at all. It operated many trading posts along the Hudson Bay to get furs from fur traders (coureurs de bois, indians), which it exchanged for goods such as blankets, houshold goods etc.thta these traders needed. It really was in the whosale business business until the 20th c. when it started operarting retail shops out West. In Paris in 1838 Aristide Boucicaut started the emporium that developed into Bon Marché by 1852, the first department store that offered a wide variety of goods in "departments" all under one roof. Goods were sold at a fixed price, with guarantees allowing exchanges and refunds. The Bon March was NOT the firts retail sotre Boicicaut's store in 1852 was 20x30 small store similar to Eaton's Toronto store in 1869 and similar to AT Stewart's first store around 1823.

In New York City in 1846, Irish-born entrepreneur A.T. Stewart established the prototype of the US department store on the east side of Broadway, between Chambers and Reade Streets. He offered European retail merchandise at set 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 true department store on a full city block at Broadway and 9th Street, opposite Grace Church, with eight floors and 19 departments of dress goods and furnishing materials, carpets, glass and china, toys and sports equipment, ranged around a central glass-covered court. Within a couple of decades, New York's retail center had shifted uptown, forming a stretch of retail shopping from A.T. Stewart's as far as 23rd Street, on Broadway and Sixth Avenue, a stretch that was called the "Ladies' Mile." Macy's, founded as a dry goods store by Rowland Hussey Macy in 1858, 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 & Strauss. Many of the grand buildings of the 1880s and 90s remain, now put to other uses.

Similar developments were under way in London (with Liberty And Company) and in Paris (with La Samaritaine) and in Chicago, where department stores sprang up along State Street, notably Marshall Field and Company, which remains the second-largest store in the world (after 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.

In the beginning, some department stores leased space to individual merchants, along the lines of the New change in late 17th-century London, but by 1900 the smaller companies were purchased or replaced by the larger company. In some ways they were very similar to our modern malls, where the property owner has no direct interest in the 'departments' or 'stores,' other than to collect rent and provide utilities. Today only the most specialized departments are leased out. This could include photography and photo finishing, automotive services, or financial services. But this is rare. Even the store restaurant is usually run by the department store now.

Virtually since the beginning department stores featured food courts, entertainments, specialty and seasonal kiosks. These were joined together in spectacular buildings with central atriums, with the departments arrayed around this center. The owners of the larger building usually advertised his department store as a bastion of convenience and ease, but left individual departments free to advertise themselves.

Department Stores worldwide

In 1906, Harry Gordon Selfridge a junior partner in Marshall Field's, left America to set up a department store, Selfridges in London. After it opened in 1909 it stimulated wide-ranging changes to British retail practice.

The term "department store" is used somewhat more narrowly in the UK than in the US, generally only being applied to stores with a very wide range of departments situated in city and town centre or indoor shopping centre locations. Examples would include Debenhams, John Lewis and House of Fraser.

The term "department store" is not generally used for chains such as Marks & Spencer with only a few departments; these are termed "retail multiples". Warehouse-style general merchandise stores on the Wal-Mart model are few in the UK, and they are not thought of as department stores.

See also

• list of department stores for specific retail establishments by location.
• retailer
• marketing
• distribution
• depato (Japanese department stores)

Sources/external links

• The Department Store
• A.T. Stewart's