Galeries Lafayette sells 22 stores to franchisee

French department store chain Galeries Lafayette will sell 22 locations to real estate group Financière Immobilière Bordelaise, which will in turn manage these as a franchise store. Nothing will change for the employees.

Half of locations are franchise stores

Once the sale has been concluded, Galeries Lafayette will still own 28 French stores and 27 will become franchise stores. It is not clear how much Financière Immobilière Bordelaise will pay for the deal, which should be finalized by mid-2018. The nearly 900 employees will all keep their job.

The sale is part of Galeries Lafayette’s 2014 strategy: it wants to make its store more future-proof, more international and wants to emphasize digital sales more. It recently announced it will open a first store in Luxembourg soon and also wants to open twenty stores abroad in the next few years, including in China and the Middle East.

To achieve its digitization goals, it acquired a majority stake in La Redoute in the summer of 2017, which should give it a sizeable online boost.