This article is about the French department store. For other stores of similar name, see Bon Marché (disambiguation).
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Now the property of LVMH, it sells a wide range of high-end goods, including food in an adjacent building at 38, rue de Sèvres, called La Grande Épicerie de Paris.
History
Early history
In 1838 Au Bon Marché was founded in Paris as a novelty shop created by brothers Paul and Justin Videau to sell lace, ribbons, sheets, mattresses, buttons, umbrellas and other assorted goods. The store originally had four departments, twelve employees and a floor space of 300 m2 (3,200 sq ft).[1][2]
Entrepreneur Aristide Boucicaut became a partner of the store in 1852, and changed the marketing plan, introducing fixed prices and guarantees that allowed exchanges and refunds, the store also now offered a wider variety of merchandise. The use of fixed prices replaced the haggling system which was then commonly used in dry goods stores.[3][4] With Boucicaut's changes the annual income of the store increased from 500,000 francs in 1852 to five million francs in 1860.[1]
In 1869 a much larger building was built for the store at 24 rue de Sèvres in Paris's Rive Gauche (Left Bank) this new building was designed by Louis-Auguste Boileau with Alexandre Laplanche ornamenting Boileau's ironwork. Louis-Charles Boileau son of Louis-Auguste Boileau also continued designing for the store in the 1870s.[5] The store was expanded again in 1872 with the help of the engineering firm of Gustave Eiffel, creator of the Eiffel Tower.[3]
By Boucicaut's death in 1877 the stores income had risen from twenty million francs in 1870 to 72 million. After his death management of the store was taken over by his wife, Marguerite Boucicaut.[citation needed]
The floor space of the store had increased from 300 m2 (3,200 sq ft) in 1838 to 55,000 m2 (590,000 sq ft) and the number of employees had risen to 1,888 by 1879.[citation needed]
Boucicaut had become famous for his marketing innovations, including a reading room where husbands could wait whilst their wives shopped; extensive newspaper advertising; entertainment for children and six million catalogs sent to customers. By 1880 half the employees of the store were women. Unmarried women employees lived in dormitories on the upper floors.[6]
In the 1920s Louis-Hippolyte Boileau grandson of the architect Louis-Auguste Boileau who had designed the store in the 1870s worked on an extension of the store.[citation needed]
On 31 August 1959 a branch store was opened in Caen. This store was later closed in 1989 and sold to Printemps.[7]
In 1984, Bernard Arnault purchased Bon Marché and in 1987 the company became a founding member of Arnault's group LVMH.[9]
Operations
In 1922, when the decorative arts were at their high point in France, the Pomone design and decorating department was established, following the trend of other Parisian department stores. From 1923 to 1928, Paul Follot (1877–1941) was its director, followed by René-Lucien Prou (1889–1948) and Albert-Lucien Guénot (1894–1993) up to 1955. Today's home-furnishings inventory primarily consists of brand names but not white goods.
Influence
The building inspired the design of the Bon Marche store in Sydney, designed by Arthur Anderson,[10] as well as the Galerias Pacifico shopping centre in Buenos Aires, originally called Argentine Bon Marché.[11]
*SHON = surface area minus that of the stairs, lifts, unusable ceiling spaces, roof terraces, open-air terraces, balconies, corridors and garages; less a further 5% for insulation.[14]
^Ladonne, Jennifer (December 2014 – January 2015). "Three Grandes Dames: The History of the Legendary Department Stores of Paris". France Today. Vol. 30, no. 1. pp. 70–74.
^Fitoussi, Brigitte & Fortes, Imogen (2017). 50: Paris in Fifty Design Icons. London: Conran Octopus. pp. 18–19. ISBN978-1840917420.
^Jan Whitaker (2011). The World of Department Stores. New York: Vendome Press. p. 22. ISBN978-0-86565-264-4.
Byars, Mel. "Follot, Paul" "Pomone", "Guénot, Albert-Lucien", and "Prou, René-Lucien", The Design Encyclopedia, New York: The Museum of Modern Art, 2004, pp. 234, 289, 585, 598–599. ISBN0-87070-012-X, 978-0-87070-012-5.
Sennott, R Stephen ed., "Department Store", Encyclopedia of 20th-Century Architecture, New York: Fitzroy Dearborn, vol. 1, A–F, p. 356.
Zola, Émile, Au Bonheur des Dames, Paris: Charpentier, 1883. First serialized in the periodical Gil Blas and then published as the 11th novel in Zola's Rougon-Macquart series. Is one of Zola's more positive novels about changes in society during the Second Empire; documents the birth of modern retailing and changes in city planning and architecture; considers feminism; deconstructs desire in the marketplace; and tells in a Cinderella format the life of the Boucicauts who, in the novel, appear as Octave Mouret and Denise Baudu.
Michael B. Miller, The Bon Marché: Bourgeois Culture and the Department Store, 1869–1920, Princeton: Princeton University, 1981
External links
Wikimedia Commons has media related to Le Bon Marché.
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