 La Semeuse building in 2011 | |
| Industry | Consumer credit |
|---|---|
| Founded | 1913 |
| Headquarters | , France |
| Owner | La Samaritaine |
La Semeuse de Paris was a consumer credit company owned by the La Samaritaine department store in Paris. It sold coupons to working class consumers, who paid in installments. They could spend the coupons at La Samaritaine or other stores. The Art Deco building that housed the company is now a historical monument.
Georges Dufayel developed a system of buying vouchers through installment payments, which could then be spent in stores that accepted the vouchers. [1] Dufayel owned a retail chain that accepted his vouchers, and they were also accepted by independent stores. These included La Samaritaine, which doubled its sales in one year after introducing credit. [2] La Semeuse was created in 1913 by some of Dufayel's former employees, with a similar credit model. [1] The motto was "Capital must work; workers must have [capital]". Door-to-door salespeople sold coupons to working class consumers. [3] After making a small down-payment, the buyer could buy goods with the coupon, paying the rest later. [4] They could also wait until they had paid for the coupon before using it, treating it as a form of savings account. [5] The founders were praised by l'Humanité as "syndicalists and revolutionaries". [3]
La Semeuse won the La Samaritaine account. Dufayel tried to block the move. When that failed he entered into direct competition with La Samaritaine in selling clothing. Soon after La Samaritaine bought La Semeuse. [3] The form of consumer credit provided by La Semeuse, Provident and others spread in France in the interwar period, in competition with credit arrangements offered by unions of retailers and with consumer finance companies backed by car and appliance manufacturers. [6] The company did well, and by 1929 three hundred retailers were accepting its coupons. [3] Consumers in France in 1949 could buy appliances on credit from La Semeuse, and also from Gaz de France and the CAF. [7] By 1953 La Semeuse had outstanding consumer sales loans of 5 billion old francs. [8] Eventually the La Semeuse coupons were replaced by the Sofinco credit card. [5] Sofinco was founded in 1951 by the Fédération nationale de l'ameublement (National Furniture Federation). In 2000 it became a wholly owned subsidiary of Crédit Agricole . [9]
The "La Semeuse" building was constructed between 1910 and 1912 at 14–16, rue du Louvre in the 1st arrondissement. The building also contained apartments. The architect was Frantz Jourdain and it was built by Ernest Cognacq. It has an Art Nouveau decor. [10] The elongated forms and protrusions are typical of the modern style. The elevator and its cage have largely preserved the original style, with windows designed by Francis Jourdain, the son of Franz Jourdain. [11] As of 11 December 2000 the facades, roofs and public areas were listed on the inventory of historical monuments. It was also listed as a 20th-century heritage building. [10]
A department store is a retail establishment offering a wide range of consumer goods in different areas of the store, each area ("department") specializing in a product category. In modern major cities, the department store made a dramatic appearance in the middle of the 19th century, and permanently reshaped shopping habits, and the definition of service and luxury. Similar developments were under way in London, in Paris and in New York City (Stewart's).
The 13th arrondissement of Paris is one of the 20 arrondissements of Paris. In spoken French, the arrondissement is referred to as le treizième.
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A scrip is any substitute for legal tender. It is often a form of credit. Scrips have been created and used for a variety of reasons, including exploitative payment of employees under truck systems; or for use in local commerce at times when regular currency was unavailable, for example in remote coal towns, military bases, ships on long voyages, or occupied countries in wartime. Besides company scrip, other forms of scrip include land scrip, vouchers, token coins such as subway tokens, IOUs, arcade tokens and tickets, and points on some credit cards.
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La Samaritaine is a large department store in Paris owned by LVMH. It is located in the first arrondissement; the nearest métro station is Pont-Neuf, directly in front at the quai du Louvre and the rue de la Monnaie. The company was owned by Ernest Cognacq and Marie-Louise Jaÿ who hired architect Frantz Jourdain to expand their original store, starting as a small apparel shop and over time expanding into an ensemble of department store buildings with a total of 90 different departments. It has been a member of the International Association of Department Stores from 1985 to 1992.
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Federal Employees' Distributing Company, known as Fedco, was a membership department store chain that operated in Southern California from 1948 to 1999.
Henri Sauvage was a French architect and designer in the early 20th century. He was one of the most important architects in the French Art Nouveau movement, Art Deco, and the beginning of architectural modernism. He was also a pioneer in the construction of public housing buildings in Paris. His major works include the art nouveau Villa Majorelle in Nancy, France and the art-deco building of the La Samaritaine department store in Paris.
Georges-Henri Pingusson was a French architect.
Georges Dufayel was a Parisian retailer and businessman who popularized and expanded the practice of buying merchandise on credit and purchasing from catalogues. He is mainly remembered as the founder of the Grands Magasins Dufayel, a large and opulent department store in the Goutte d'Or district of Paris that sold household furnishings. It closed in 1930, but the building, somewhat modified, still stands.
Frantz Jourdain was a Belgian architect and author. He is best known for La Samaritaine, an Art Nouveau department store built in the 1st arrondissement of Paris in three stages between 1904 and 1928. He was respected as an authority on Art Nouveau.
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Paul Léon Jourdain was a French industrialist and politician who was a deputy from 1919 to 1927 and a senator from 1927 to 1944. He was Minister of Labor in 1919–21 and for a brief period in 1924. He was Minister of Pensions from 1925–26.
Marie-Louise Jaÿ was a French businesswoman who started work as a shop girl. With her husband Ernest Cognacq she created the La Samaritaine store in Paris, which grew into a chain of large department stores. Innovations included good lighting, clearly marked fixed prices, and allowing customers to pick out their own clothes and try them on before buying. The couple were active in philanthropic work, and gave out bonuses for large families during the population crisis that followed World War I (1914–18).
The Art Nouveau movement of architecture and design flourished in Paris from about 1895 to 1914, reaching its high point at the 1900 Paris International Exposition. with the Art Nouveau metro stations designed by Hector Guimard. It was characterized by a rejection of historicism and traditional architectural forms, and a flamboyant use of floral and vegetal designs, sinuous curving lines such as the whiplash line, and asymmetry. It was most prominent in architecture, appearing in department stores, apartment buildings, and churches; and in the decorative arts, particularly glassware, furniture, and jewelry. Besides Guimard, major artists included René Lalique in glassware, Louis Majorelle in furniture, and Alphonse Mucha in graphic arts, It spread quickly to other countries, but lost favor after 1910 and came to an end with the First World War.
Triple Stimulus Vouchers were a series of vouchers issued in response to the 2020 Coronavirus recession by the government of the Republic of China as part of its post-epidemic revitalisation of the business climate in the country, as the economy of Taiwan took a major hit from the global pandemic.
Victor Jean-Baptiste Mollet, usually simply Victor Mollet, was a French architect based in Lille. He was the first architect from the Nord–Pas-de-Calais region to receive a degree from the Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris, and became one of the more prominent exponents of regionalist architecture in northern France at the turn of the twentieth century.
