Before the Covid-19 pandemic, Selfridges was a must-visit for Australian prestige cosmetics buyers from the leading department store chains during their annual overseas trips to check out international trends.
The British retailing icon has long been a trendsetter for one-off launches, future forward beauty trends and retail breakthroughs. For beauty fans eager to get their hands on the store’s exclusives and hard-to-get brands, Selfridges also delivers to Australia.
In June, rumours of a mystery buyer placing an unsolicited bid for Selfridges started to swirl. Last week, one of the most famous names in global department store retailing officially went up for sale with an asking price of AUD$7.5 billion. The deal, overseen by Credit Suisse, includes four stores in the UK, as well as the Brown Thomas and Arnotts department stores in Ireland and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands.
The Weston family, one of Canada’s wealthiest clans, bought Selfridges in 2003 for AUD$1.18 billion. With global interests, the Westons own more than 200 companies in Canada, Ireland and the UK, including Loblaws, Canada’s largest supermarket chain, and prestige department store chains from Selfridges to Holt Renfrew in Canada, Brown Thomas and Arnotts in Ireland and De Bijenkorf in the Netherlands.
Selfridges landmark Oxford Street premises in London is the largest store in the UK after Harrods. In 2015, the company commenced an AUD$567.6 million renovation of the famous establishment – then the biggest ever investment for a single project by a department store in the world.
The London store reboot and the addition of restaurants, a cinema and a skate bowl helped Selfridges sales to lift 7 per cent to AUD$3.72 billion in the 12 months to February 2020. But like its counterparts elsewhere, the Covid-19 pandemic has hammered local and international foot traffic.
Several names have emerged as potential buyers, including Central Retail Group of Thailand, who own La Rinascente in Italy, Illum in Denmark and KaDeWe in Berlin. Hudson’s Bay Co, the owner of Saks Fifth Avenue, the Lane Crawford Group of Hong Kong, private equity firms and sovereign wealth funds such as the Qatar Investment Authority, the owner of Harrods, could also be in the running.