$1 MILLION SHARE BUYING AT STORES GROUP

Reinventing the store: How the shape of modern retailing was both predicted and influenced by some unlikely seers

Dominated by 22 pillars, the long grey neoclassical 1909 façade of Selfridges, one of London's great department stores, seems anachronistic. The exterior suggests values—of grandeur, dignity and authority—from another era. The interior doesn't. Consumer anarchy reigns, with over 3,000 different brands, all in their own concessions, screaming for attention.

Selfridges nearly went out of business (as so many department stores have done) in the 1990s. But it reinvented itself by dismissing the order, formality and stillness of the old stores. Every brand was given its head and allowed to do what it wanted. Uniforms are out, as is standard decor, shelving and presentation. There is no hierarchy of goods; watches compete with perfume, luggage with high fashion, cafés with fast food. Shows, action and stunts break up the day. Selfridges calls it “shopping entertainment”. So successful is it that four years ago a panel of style gurus voted it Britain's “coolest brand”.

Jean-François Lyotard might not have enjoyed an afternoon at Selfridges. He was a French philosopher not known for his interest in handbags. But, had he dropped in for a little retail therapy, he might have recognized what he saw. As he wrote, “eclecticism is the degree zero of contemporary general culture; one listens to reggae, watches a Western, eats McDonald's food for lunch and local cuisine for dinner, wears Paris perfume in Tokyo and retro clothes in Hong Kong; knowledge is a matter for TV games.”

Lyotard's name would not be the first that springs to mind when tracing the roots of contemporary retailing and business. That said, the French philosophers whose interest in accessories was limited to a Gauloise drooping stylishly from the corner of the mouth do not seem natural retail gurus. Yet there is a curious (and, given their contempt for consumption, somewhat ironic) relationship between today's shops and the ideas of the French post-modernists.

Lyotard, Roland Barthes, Michel Foucault and Jacques Derrida were all from the far left. The pomos (as they are affectionately known to adherents) wanted to destroy capitalism and bourgeois society. The students whom they inspired took to the streets in May 1968 hoping to do just that. Yet, paradoxically, the pomos predicted with eerie precision how capitalism would reinvent itself in the 1980s and 1990s. Even worse (for them), they gave modern retailers, advertisers and businessmen the tools to do so.

Liberal economics has probably had a greater role in transforming capitalism than a few French Marxists using long words. But the pomos' ideas have had a certain influence, seeping into common consciousness through the lecture halls and student campuses. Many brands have been developed by people who were brought up on the idealism of the 1960s, post-modernism's heyday. Entrepreneurs such as Virgin's Sir Richard Branson bring an emancipatory, anti-corporatist tilt to their business. Modern marketing has consciously co-opted the tools of post-modern “discourse” to sell more stuff. Brands such as Nike explicitly adopt rebellious attitudes in their advertising campaigns. Thus capitalism employs the critique that was designed to destroy it.

This fragmentation has changed the way businesses operate. Those that have prospered embrace fragmentation and cater to the niche. Mark Lee, a management consultant, argues that the “new huge empires are based around one niche”. Zara, a Spanish clothing group, for instance, appeals to the breathless fashionista: the speed of turnover of its styles would chime with the pomos' penchant for permanent revolution. Accessorize, a British chain, caters to women who want fashionable scarves, jewellery and the like but do not have a lot of money. Dolce & Gabbana is for people with lots of money and loud taste. American Apparel sells expensive T-shirts to people who care that they are produced by happy, well-treated workers: its niche is moral as well as economic.

Businesses that have suffered most are those – such as department stores – that clung too long to the idea of a mass market, one stop-store. Insider Moves looks at one of those old time store groups that is reinventing itself and where, despite fears of falling consumer spending, the CEO has just spent $1 million buying his company’s shares.