For 170 years, BHV has been one of Paris’s most durable retail stories, from a trinket shop to a multi‑floored department store that helped shape how Parisians furnished, fixed and lived in their homes. It is a real saga, from the entrepreneurial zeal at the beginning, the rise of consumer society that anchored the store as a home-goods destination, the consolidation under Galeries Lafayette leadership, to the shocks of the last years: a pandemic, a polarising commercial bet with SHEIN, and the subsequent arrival of institutional capital. At stake is more than square metres and sales: the future of a retail anchor whose identity is tightly woven into Parisian everyday life. 

IADS Exclusive – BHV: 170 years of history and an uncertain future

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