Harrods, Britain's most famous department store, is launching an online shopping service in a bid to capitalise on the explosive growth of Internet retailing.
Shoppers will be able to place their order on the Internet and take delivery anywhere in the world.
Charles Henry Harrod could not have conceived the grocery store he founded in 1849 would deliver Beluga caviar to Buenos Aires socialites and Prada handbags to Italian ambassadors' wives who may never have set foot in London's up-market Knightsbridge district.
Harrods, one of the British capital's top tourist attractions, with 35,000 visitors a day, owes about 20 per cent of its turnover to overseas customers.
The store, owned by Mohamed Fayed, has partnerships with retailers in Asia-Pacific, but opportunities to buy its branded goods and broad range of designer products remain limited.
Harrods is thought to be aiming to achieve 15 per cent of total sales over the Internet by exploiting its world-wide reputation and winning exclusive deals with luxury goods suppliers such as Gucci.
The move is final acknowledgement by one of the world's most traditional retailers that shopping is changing.
The store regained control of its Internet "domain name" in 1997 after four people registered harrods.com, but no efforts were made to pursue e-commerce further.
Britain's top-end shops have been slow to embrace the Internet compared with mass market retailers such as Gap, which opened its online store in 1997.
Fortnum & Mason, the luxury food store in London's West End, launched its e-commerce site late last year to meet demand in the run-up to Christmas. The service is restricted to corporate gifts. Delivery charges in Britain start at £5 sterling (€7.59) and rise sharply for overseas orders.
The store plans to extend its ecommerce capabilities in time for Christmas this year. Ms Miranda Schofield, marketing manager, said: "It broadens our audience. We only have one store so it is a shop front to the world."
Selfridges is reconstructing its Internet site after the first attempt, which did not allow transactions, received unfavourable reviews. Harvey Nichols does not yet have a Web presence.
The wider commercial benefits of online retailing appear to outweigh fears about brand dilution.
Even Tiffany's of New York, the world's premier jeweller, is planning to sell its exclusive range on-line, having only last year vowed never to stoop so low as to hawk its wares on the Web.
