Selfridges adds to experiential offer, is to open cinema

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Sep 10, 2019

Selfridges has been moving at breakneck speed into the experiential retail area and if you thought the skate bowl it opened in-store was the culmination of its ‘retail-tainment’ ambitions, you were wrong.

The company has now revealed that it’s to open a cinema in its London flagship. The Selfridges Cinema will be open all year and will screen blockbuster movies as well as independent films. Moviegoers will be able to access it directly from the street but there will also be an entrance in-store.

It’s certainly an interesting move. Shoppers in retail parks and malls have been able to pop out of their favourite stores to view a movie for years. But anyone who feels that way in Selfridges (until now) has had to trek down to Marble Arch or even further to Leicester Square to catch a screening.

The cinema will change all that and will also increase dwell time in-store when it opens during November in partnership with independent cinema Olympic Studios.

What Selfridges shoppers will get is a three-screen “world class” cinema (the company also said the sound technology will be world class) with an exclusive ambience — the largest of the three screens seating only 80 people. There will be a priority membership scheme.

Importantly, Selfridges said it believes it’s the first department store globally to come up with such an offer with MD Simon Forster describing it as “a very exciting yet natural extension to what Selfridges does, which is to provide customers with an extraordinary experience all year round.”