Harrods Group (Holding) Limited, doing business as the Harrods Group, is a British holding company that owns the Harrods luxury department store in Knightsbridge, London, England. The original Harrods store was founded in 1849 by Charles Henry Harrod, and the first holding company, Harrod's Stores Limited, was formed and listed on the London Stock Exchange in 1889. It was acquired by and merged into the House of Fraser in 1959, which itself was acquired by the Fayed brothers and became a privately held company in 1985. When the House of Fraser was relisted on the stock exchange, the Harrods business was split off to remain privately held in 1994. The present-day Harrods Group was established by the Fayed brothers in 2006. It was sold to the Qatar Investment Authority, the sovereign wealth fund of Qatar, in 2010.
The Harrods Group is headquartered in Hammersmith, London. Beyond the flagship department store, it has operated Harrods-branded specialty shops in the United Kingdom, airports, and cruise ships. It has also applied the brand name to non-retail enterprises including Harrods Estates and Harrods Aviation.
History
Harrods opened its first and only foreign branch in Buenos Aires, Argentina in 1914. It became independent of the British shop in the late 1940s, but continued to trade under the Harrods name,[4] for many years the only Harrods outside Britain. The Harrods Furniture Depository was also built in Barnes, near Hammersmith Bridge in 1914.
A Harrods shop opened on board the RMS Queen Mary in Long Beach, California in 1990, which was then owned by the Walt Disney Company. That year, it gave right to Duty Free International for a licence to operate a Harrods Signature Shop at Toronto Pearson International Airport's Terminal 3 (closed shortly after)[5] In 1997, an English court issued an injunction to restrain the Buenos Aires Harrods store from trading under the Harrods name, but the House of Lords in 1998 dismissed Fayed's lawsuit.[4] The following year, the store in Buenos Aires closed after racking up large amounts of debt. There had been offers to buy the store from Falabella, El Corte Inglés, Printemps and more but Atilio Gilbertoni the owner of Harrods in Buenos Aires did not accept the offers as he wanted to keep the controlling stake in the brand.[6]
A Harrods shop opened on board the Queen Elizabeth 2, owned by the Cunard Line, in 2000. The Harrods "102" shop opens opposite the main shop in Brompton Road in 2006, and featured concessions like Krispy Kreme and Yo! Sushi, as well as florists, a herbalist, a masseur, and an oxygen spa; itclosed in 2013. A location at Heathrow Airport (Terminal 5) opened in 2008.[7]
The company looked at the possibility of expanding to China and opening a new shop in Shanghai in 2010. Managing director Michael Ward stated that "there are other areas of the world where we could operate profitably." The number of Chinese shoppers visiting Harrods was increasing, and the average spent by a Chinese shopper was three times that of any other nationality.[8] Harrods Bank, having operated since 1893, was sold to Tandem and rebranded to Tandem Bank in 2017.[9]
After lockdowns and restriction during the covid pandemic, Harrods made a loss of £68 million in 2020, reduced staff numbers, paid no dividend to its owners and said that no dividend was likely for another two years, and faced a strike by dozens of restaurant workers.[10]
Department store acquisitions
List of department stores acquired by Harrods Limited[7]
H Beauty is a beauty store chain that operates exclusively outside of London city limits. It is designed to gain market share beyond the reach of the flagship Harrods store, and captilize on the lack of Sephora and Ulta Beauty in the UK.[11] The first location opened at the Lakeside Shopping Centre in Thurrock, Essex in September 2020,[12] with four subsequent stores operating as of December2024[update].[13]
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£2 billion (2017)