Harrods Besieged by American Invaders : Slumping Pound Sets Up Bargains at New Year’s Sale

With fists full of cashmere sweaters, bags full of Scottish salmon and wallets full of dollars, Americans in seemingly unprecedented numbers took advantage of Britain’s crumbling currency Friday and headed for the cashier counters at Harrods as this city’s most famous and fashionable department store began its annual New Year’s sale.

An estimated 300,000 people will pass through the store in the first two days of the three-week sale. And while the opening day throng was overwhelmingly British, the twang of New York, Dallas, Charleston and Los Angeles--not to mention Tokyo--was unmistakable wherever the groping for goodies was most serious.

“It’s a great sale. We got cashmere sweaters, real good brands, that go for $225 to $250 in the states that cost 64 pounds (the equivalent of $73) here,” said Ettaleah Bluestein of Charleston, S.C. “And the service people at the store are the nicest I’ve seen anywhere, even nicer than in the South,” she added, shepherding her husband and three children to the next counter.

Jeffrey Ressler, a New York attorney, said he paid 160 pounds ($185) for a Burberry raincoat elsewhere in London “that would cost $400 to $500 in New York, and I get the (15% value-added) tax back at the airport. So you can fly here and buy a raincoat for the price of the coat in New York.”

That, in fact, is what Harrods is hoping a lot of Americans are doing. The store advertised for the first time last month in the New York Times, hoping to make a virtue, and some money, out of Britain’s plunging pound.

‘Do They Sell Bagels?’

“We got cashmere sweaters to take home in this bag, and lox to eat in the hotel in that bag,” said another New Yorker with a big smile. He declined to give his name because he didn’t want his friends to know he brought food back to the hotel. “Do they sell bagels here, too?” he asked.

The Harrods sale has become a tradition. Like homing pigeons, huge crowds flock each year to this store whose sale prices can frequently be beaten elsewhere in the city, but whose glamour, glitter and distinctive gold and green shopping bags seem to mean a bit of the good life to a lot of people who ordinarily don’t shop there.

This year, however, there is a difference--the booming dollar and the sinking pound sterling. Now valued at $1.15, Britain’s once proud currency is worth half of what it was in 1980, and the nosedive toward an exchange rate of $1 for 1 pound--something that seemed impossible a year ago--continues. The pound is worth 25% less than it was last January.

The combination of sale prices and the good exchange rate has meant that 25% of the store’s business this past year has been with American tourists, store officials said.

Last January, Harrods took in about 28 million pounds in the three weeks of the sale, and this year Alex Craddock, chairman of Harrods, estimates that the take will exceed 30 million pounds. The only estimate on the number of Americans that will pass through the store, however, is determined by the number who actually turn in applications at the airport to get their value-added tax refund for taking their purchases out of the country, according to store officials.

Interviews with a dozen or so Americans shopping here Friday produced uniform praise for the service and for the civility of both service help and most shoppers in handling what in fact is a stampede of tens of thousands of shoppers through the store’s 11 doors.

“It’s not the madhouse I expected,” said Jim Gallaher of North Carolina. “Everyone’s real helpful and very well mannered.” Lillian Turner, a New York-based TWA employee, said she took a flight here just for the sale, and while Harrods is as busy as jammed New York stores, “you don’t mind the crowds here.”

A few bargain-hunting Britons camped outside the store Thursday night, and by opening time about 3,000 were lined up outside, streets were blocked off and massive traffic jams had developed around the Knightsbridge neighborhood.

Another difference this year is that so far no terrorist bombs have exploded. On Dec. 17, 1 983, a car bomb planted outside the store by the Irish Republican Army killed six people and injured 91 others. This year no parking was allowed in front of the store, to avoid such attacks. Police were very much in evidence outside, and before the doors opened sniffer dogs were led through all six floors of the famous structure.

In fact, this year everything seems relaxed and pleasant. British actress Lorraine Chase, one of the early shoppers, tried on a Russian golden sable coat marked down from 60,000 pounds to 30,000 pounds (about $34,500). “This is the price of a house that I’ve got on my back,” she said, as she prepared to put the coat back. Two $3,500 mink coats were snapped up in a few minutes, their prices cut in half.

At a crowded chinaware counter, however, Harrods looked for a moment, at least, like any other store. “I thought I told you to stay put, ‘Enry,” an irate British women said to her husband, Henry, who had apparently wandered off into the mass of humanity under the weight of several green and gold bags. But she admonished him in hushed tones.