rtaking to offer unique experiences to its exclusive customer base – the lofty 0.1 per cent of the world’s wealth. “If you are over complacent and stationary in retail, you start to die. Every time the customer wants to see you, they want to see something new, different and interesting. Our job is to stretch the imagination for our customer,” Ward pointed out. Over the course of the next three to four years, Harrods will remodel virtually every part of the store, including the restoration of its world-renowned food hall. “We want to try to recover our gastronomic crown in London. We let it slip a little bit, so we’re spending almost £20 million restoring the food halls and taking it to that point of excellence and engagement. At the latest hall, which will open on 5 November, the bakers will be in the hall. You’ll be able to see the bakers and every hour, the sourdough will come out of the ovens with those amazing smells,” he said. “You’ll be able to roast your own coffee. We’ve been scouring the patisserie training schools of Europe for three years and we currently have the best patisserie chef and chocolatier in the UK to be able to deliver on that promise of excellence.” Harrods is also aiming to create a centre of excellence for wine and cigars, which will include the creation of a cigar smoking room with a sophisticated airflow system and the ability for customers to monitor their keep from anywhere in the world. “Our airflow system allows you to smoke, but not even your suit will smell of your cigars afterwards,” Ward said with pride. The art of buying While other luxury stores around the world are turning to outlets and discounting, Harrods is firmly maintaining its prices and exclusivity. “To me, off-price is an anathema with luxury. Our job is about exclusivity, experience, connecting with customers – that shopping experience overextends that of price,” Ward explained. “We have to have a sale. It’s effectively getting rid of the mistakes of the buying teams, but they’re going for shorter and shorter periods of time. Getting new product into our sale is key, and by the end of the first week, we are predominantly new season.” Unlike many other buying teams, Ward asks his teams to switch off any form of technology when they buy, instead taking a very old-school approach. “We buy in terms of cash amounts and we negotiate those cash amounts. The reason for that is we’ve got brilliant buyers,” he said. “Our edit is exceptional. People want to come for that breadth of range, but it’s really an exceptional edit. That’s the skill of the buyer. A computer will never tell you that because something sold this year, it’s going to sell next year. It’s about understanding the trends. When they go back, we switch on the merchandise management system and we monitor them, but we don’t want to lose the skill flair and expertise of the buyer.” An old-fashioned customer experience Whether it’s the department store’s meticulous attention to detail when it created its “floating” escalators or bringing in master perfumers to create bespoke fragrances for customers, Harrods continues to be old-fashioned in its approach to retail, Ward said. He used an example of shopping for fine jewellery to illustrate his point. “If I’ve got a quarter of a million pounds to spend on a pair earrings or a necklace, I’ve got two alternatives. I can go to Bond Street, I can ring a doorbell and be confronted by a huge security guy, who will deign whether I am worthy to go in, be attacked by a sales assistant who hasn’t seen a customer in two days and I’ll see a beautiful piece of jewellery. Then I’ll repeat that process seven times as I go through Harry Winston to Graff to Bulgari. Or I can wander around Harrods and I can walk into Graff, I can walk into Harry Winston and see that gorgeous tutti-frutti piece. And at the end of it, we’ll put them altogether on a table for you. It’s about creating that amazing shopping experience. I think people are losing sight of that.” Despite the high cost of the department store’s lavish shopfit, the higher end the customer, the more attention to detail is required – even if finance teams prefer to save more money during the process. “I tend to have two devils, one on each shoulder – one is Chanel, one is Hermes. And whenever the finance person says, ‘Should we save?’ I look at Hermes and he says, ‘Noooo.’ And Chanel says, ‘You know, just go for it!’ And therefore we have the most amazingly beautiful store.” Keep an eye out for Inside Retail’s coverage of Shoptalk Europe, where the latest innovations in e-commerce and retail were discussed at the jam-packed event in Copenhagen.