Galeries Lafayette
The Galeries Lafayette [ ɡalʁi lafajɛt ] is a large, traditional French department store chain . The head office in Paris , one of the oldest department stores in France, is remarkable for its Art Nouveau architecture .
history
The merchant Théophile Bader from Dambach-la-Ville and his cousin Alphonse Kahn from Kolbsheim first opened a lingerie shop in 1894 with a shop area of 70 m² in the 9th arrondissement in Rue La Fayette No. 1 in a prime business location, a few minutes away from the Parisian Opera . They named the shop in 1894 after the street in Aux Galeries Lafayette . On December 21, 1895, the company bought the entire building, rue La Fayette No. 1; The fashion store soon became a department store with 265 m² on five floors. In the following five years, more fashion stores were added in Paris and Lyon . The company expanded its business activities beyond pure retail to include fashion production. In 1899, the Société Anonyme des Galeries Lafayette was founded.
In 1906 Georges Chedanne received the order for a 10-story redesign, which was finished in 1908. As a result, the parent company expanded to the address 38–41 Boulevard Haussmann . In 1907 the department store had more than 750 employees. From 1910 to 1912 a building complex was erected in reinforced concrete skeleton construction. A 40-meter-high colored glass dome was erected on the 33-meter-high Art Nouveau gallery hall; the opening took place on October 8, 1912. The house now had a sales area of 18,000 m². In 1912 Kahn sold his share to Bader.
At the beginning of the First World War , the company suffered a phase of falling sales. A branch was opened in Nice in 1916 and another branch in London in 1920 . The shops in Paris and Lyon were continuously expanded. 1931 opened a branch in Bucharest .
To counter the effects of the global economic crisis , the first Monoprix store was opened in October 1932 (in Rouen ); By 1938, 42 Monoprix branches had been set up in France: department stores with simple furnishings and popular, popular goods at uniform prices. Uniprix, founded in 1928, and Prisunic, founded in 1931, opened and operated similar department stores.
In June 1940 the Wehrmacht occupied parts of France ; the Vichy regime soon passed some anti-Jewish laws . This forced the entire management, consisting of Théophile Bader, Max Heilbronn and Raoul Meyer, to resign. The company was "Aryanized" . Bader died on March 16, 1942. Heilbronn was arrested by the SD on June 12, 1943, then imprisoned in Lyon and Compiègne , deported to Buchenwald on January 3, 1944 , then to Natzweiler-Struthof and then to the Allach satellite camp . There he was liberated on April 30, 1945. In 1945, after the Second World War , Heilbronn and Meyer took over management again.
The first post-war years were characterized by supply bottlenecks and a limited range. From around 1950 the company was able to offer and expand the full range of goods as it had in pre-war times. In the 1970s, the chain had a department store in almost every major city in France.
Nearby, at 64 Boulevard Haussmann , is Printemps , the second famous Parisian department store.
In 1996, Galeries Lafayette was one of the first companies to open a department store in the former eastern part of Berlin after German reunification , the Galeries Lafayette Berlin .
Economic data
The department store counts 60,000 visitors every day who can choose between 6 restaurants. In 2005 the Groupe Galeries Lafayette group of companies employed around 35,000 people. With a sales area of 68,000 m², it is the largest department store in the western world and therefore also the largest of the twelve most important department stores in Paris. Since 2001 there has been a division into Lafayette Homme (men's clothing; 2001), Lafayette Gourmet (food and drinks; 2002), Lafayette Maison (living) and VO (fashion; 2004) and Lafayette Shoes , since July 2009 the largest women's shoe store with 3,200 m² of the world.
The department store chain Galeries Lafayette has also owned the French department store chain Monoprix since it was founded in 1932, but sold its shares in June 2012. The group also includes the department store chain Bazar de l'Hôtel de Ville (BHV), as well as various finance, insurance and travel companies. The company also owns extensive properties in prime locations in Paris. In 2004, the group generated sales of 5.64 billion euros and a profit before taxes of 133.9 million euros.
The department store group's free float was traded on the Paris stock exchange until July 2005 . The majority of the shares were owned by the Etienne Moulin families (31.7%), Georges Meyer (29.5%) and Max Heilbronn (1.7%). The Moulin family took over the shares of the Meyer and Heilbronn families and now owns 62.9%, while BNP Paribas owns 37.1% .
literature
- Carole Garlet: Le Match des grands magasins Galeries Lafayette-Printemps Haussmann: 1965–2001. Master's thesis of the Université Panthéon-Sorbonne, Paris, 2002, 88- [15] -93.
- Max Heilbronn with Jacques Varin: Galeries Lafayette, Buchenwald, Galeries Lafayette. Economica, Paris, 1990, ISBN 2-7178-1805-7 .
- Stéphane Lauer: «Galeries Lafayette. In the coulisses d'une machine à vendre ». In: Le Monde Magazine , December 19, 2009, pp. 28–35.
- Philippe Verheyde: Les Galeries Lafayette 1899-1955: histoire économique d'un grand magasin. Master's thesis from the Université de Paris, 1990.
Movie
- The big dream department stores - Galeries Lafayette, Paris. Documentary, Germany, 2017, 52:08 min., Script and director: Elke Werry, production: Telekult, Saarländischer Rundfunk , arte , series: Die große Traumkaufhäuser , first broadcast: February 12, 2017 by arte, summary by ARD .
Web links
- Groupe Galeries Lafayette (French, English)
- The Group. In: The world . March 23, 2003.
Individual evidence
- ↑ Galeries Lafayette: les affiches “entreprise juive” sont apposées sur les vitrines dès juin 1940. (No longer available online.) In: Israel valley, site officiel de la chamber de commerce France-Israël. Israelvalley Desk, archived from the original on July 22, 2016 ; Retrieved February 18, 2017 (French). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.
- ^ Annie Lacroix-Riz: Industriels et banquiers français sous l'Occupation. Édition Armand Colin, 2nd revised edition 2013, ISBN 978-2-200-27776-5 , (first edition 1999), p. 91 ff. ( Books.google.de ).
- ↑ Joachim Zentes, Dirk Morschett, Hanna Schramm-Klein: Strategic Retail Management. 2011, p. 285 f. ( Books.google.de ).
Coordinates: 48 ° 52 '24 " N , 2 ° 19' 56" E