Harrods of Knightsbridge
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Harrods is a department store on Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, London, England. It was established in 1834 in London's East End, by Charles Henry Harrod, as a grocery specialising in tea. It moved to Knightsbridge in 1849, to take advantage of the expected customer flow from the Great Exhibition happening in nearby Hyde Park in 1851. It began with a small shop in the same site as the present store. The original Knightsbridge shop employed two assistants and a messenger boy. Under Charles Digby Harrod, son of the founder, the shop developed into a thriving retail operation selling medicines, perfumes, stationery, fruit and vegetables.
The expanding business enabled Harrods to buy up adjoining buildings. By 1880, it was employing a staff of one hundred. Unfortunately, in early December 1883, the shop caught fire and burnt to the ground. Remarkably, Charles Harrod was able to fulfill his commitments to his customers for Christmas - and made record profit as well. Within a short time, a new building was under construction. Its best customers also enjoyed a credit line, among them Oscar Wilde, Noël Coward, Sigmund Freud, A. A. Milne, and many members of the British royal family.
Today the Harrods store occupies a 4.5-acre site and has over one million square feet of retail space. It is one of the largest department stores in the world. It was acquired by Mohamed Al-Fayed in 1985 for £615 million.
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