Yet ANOTHER reviewing and blogging first for me:- the realms of shopping and fashion, and encapsulated in a documentary; several firsts. OK, I freely admit I do not claim to know the ultimate ins and outs of the shopping industry, but that is not to say I do not occasionally enjoy the process of shopping. What's more I greatly support the idea that we as a nation should be supporting different and individual shops as well as or even instead of massive chains. Liberty of London is definitely individual to say the least, but from what I can see, not for all the right reasons.
What I am sure attracts many to Liberty, and indeed would attract me as it did to the programme, is the building itself. To watch a programme that looks at such an incredible structure of such heritage, and how one runs a shop within it is of course, fascinating. So too is looking at the sheer range of eclectic and fantastic products that they were stocking in days gone by, and still stock today.
However for me, that's where the positives end. I'm sorry but any grandeur and mystique and special hold such a shop might have (and there seems to be potential) is completely enveloped by the sheer range of characters you find in there. And unusually, I use the word 'characters' in not such a good way. It really was very odd to watch. To see the efforts they go to in order to promote and maintain such a unique establishment, not least the amounts of money they earn, and in some cases award each other, for doing so was mind-boggling. Mind-boggling when most of the staff who work there, from the shop floor to the top echelons seem utterly weird to put it lightly.
Where to start? OK, there were a few glimmers, mostly in the form of old hands who had worked at Liberty for years but even then...only glimmers. There were two ladies who made me smile without much of a problem: the two who worked in Liberty's haberdashery department. They were eclectic and perhaps a tad eccentric sure but like-able. Then there was the lady who seemed to be a receptionist/administrator-type in Head Office. She seemed quite sweet in her own, mad way. The story of a 70 year old Indian lady who had been working at the shop for 40 years was sweet, but the way they showed her do her job was not. I watched her coerce and seduce, and scrabble at a woman (who seemed quite 'unusual' in herself) to buy three cushions she clearly didn't come in for...costing £400. This leads me onto another major poor point for Liberty which came across badly in the programme - how they do business. The aforementioned Indian lady was the sweetest at it, but any impression that Liberty is a magical Utopian environment is quashed when you see that their business-sense is profound, which would be fine - a plus even, but is also cold, manipulative and ruthless. And their prices! Yes I'm not stupid enough to think the West End is full of Poundlands, and that shops cannot have a clear business sense but the way they were trying to sell such items of extortionate value (the highest being £69,000 for a ring!) was verging on the deplorable. We even got to see them take in some new Christmas recruits, who were to be fair quite demure and fresh-faced - you could tell they hadn't been there long. In their introduction to the store they were briefed on how to "capture clients", in terms of "approaching" them, "capturing and re-capturing" them, and finally "grooming" them, as well as seeking "the best clients" and not to bother with "fluff".
Initially their customer strategies seemed quite respectable, even commendable, but it soon nose-dived into the predatory, cold, snobbish and downright awful. All I will say is they must be pretty bloody sure their plan will produce enough money, cause I doubt they'd get many walk ins after this show is aired. Now, back to individual staff - oh no I'm not done yet! Now we come to the sheer lunacy of these people, and how it came across. The General Manager of the shop, an odd man in looks, words and deeds I found, who seemed fine with identifying potential problems, but was then rendered incapable of even making any suggestions on how to to tackle them, and then spent post of his time wandering around the shop. Now, getting towards the top. The very camp, well groomed young man who seemed to be a sort of PA to the very camp, well groomed American boss of it all seemed to me to never ever do anything productive towards the business (being asked only once to help out with an email problem on a computer by his boss - his response to which was along the lines of: "oh hmmm ok" *stare blankly and camply with a stupid smirk on face*). Instead he seemed to just swan around two steps behind the boss, waving a Blackberry around. The boss of it all seems a slight quandary to me; I can't decide whether he seemed as twitteringly hopeless as the rest of them, or was actually quite clever but hid it very well. Regardless he did seem incredibly blase about his decisions and how they would affect other employees, and if he was focused, it was only ever about the bottom line on his pay cheque. But the worst, if not the funniest, staff blunder by a mile for me was when the staff of Liberty began to initiate their Christmas display (in September!) the center piece of which was a large stuffed and overpriced (nearly £2000) grizzly bear. The staff seemed to like this massive if not cuddly addition, but one problem was nagging one department head, who probably earns a vast sum of money for doing her job. She voiced it by saying something like this:-
"The only problem I think we might have with the grizzly bear is people might think we're doing a North Pole theme."
My God. I was lost for words.
You may have noticed I've gone on a bit about this. You may also notice I've put quite a few pictures, mostly of the staff featured on the show, and have not mentioned them by name (although this is partly because I've honestly forgotten - not that they were characters I'd want to remember) as well as that infamous bear, in this blog post. This is because by the end of an hour I was questioning if this was a true documentary about Liberty, or a huge stunt produced by Channel 4 to make the programme more interesting. So, if you ever go to Liberty (I doubt I will - this has put me off) then you might want to look out for these people and see if they are just as mindbogglingly odd as they come across. It really surprises me because the show also felt like it had been heavily lent on by Liberty's PR people; for instance several "crisis" meetings and situations were alluded to but never actually seen. Clearly Liberty were happy with it, so as I say they must be pretty confident in themselves and what they offer people, "groomed" or not. So as I say, I wanted to include a bit of the documentary, and the individual shopping side to this blog, and I have. However I am only sorry it didn't portray an example of British shopping individuality in the best of lights. Still, that's just how it came off to me. I could be wrong, and I'm sure the Channel 4 programme appealed to some people...whoever they may be. Don't judge all individual shops throughout the country like this, they are certainly not all in the same vain...thank the lord.
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