Georges Dufayel
| Georges Dufayel | |
|---|---|
| Born |
1 January 1855 Paris |
| Died | 28 December 1916 (aged 61) Paris |
| Occupation | Retailer |
| Nationality | French |
Georges Dufayel (1 January 1855 – 28 December 1916) was a Parisian retailer and businessman who popularized and expanded the practice of buying merchandise on credit (installment plans) 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.
Georges Jules Dufayel was born in Paris in 1855, the son of Achille Armand Dufayel and Marie Stéphanie Nicholas. He attended the Maison Dupont-Tuffier school. In 1871, he went to work for Jacques François Crespin (1824–1888), the owner of Le Palais de la Nouveauté in Paris’s 18th arrondissement. The store, which Crespin had founded in 1856, sold furnishings and housewares on credit.
Crespin died in 1888. The thirty-three-year-old Dufayel, who had been his close associate, took over direction of the enterprise. In 1890, he became sole proprietor and renamed the store Les Grands Magasins Dufayel. Over the next few years, he developed a new and flamboyant type of retailing. He gradually enlarged the store to include a concert hall, theatre, and winter garden, and offered free lectures, science demonstrations, films, and performances there to draw in customers. The building was topped with a dome surmounted by a searchlight and decorated with sculptures by Alexandre Falguière and Jules Dalou.
Although Dufayel is remembered for popularizing the method of selling goods on credit, the idea originated with Jacques François Crespin, who began by selling photographs on credit, and later built the store in which he also used this selling technique. Dufayel, however, built on Crespin’s innovation by selling coupons or tokens that allowed customers to buy goods by making a downpayment of 20 percent of the price and repaying the rest in weekly instalments. These tokens were accepted in more than 400 stores throughout France and Dufayel received 18 percent commission on all sales. The system allowed customers to buy furniture and housewares affordably over time.
Moreover, Dufayel’s store was located in a working-class area (unlike department stores such as Le Bon Marché, Samaritaine, Printemps, or Galeries Lafayette), and allowed those of more modest means access to the same kinds of shopping experience as middle-class customers. “It encouraged workers to approach shopping as a social activity, just as the bourgeoisie did at the famous department stores in central Paris.”
The building was designed to both awe and delight customers. “The entrance porch was richly ornamented with carvings and statues representing themes like ‘Credit’ and ‘Publicity’ and surmounted by a dome 180 feet high. Inside the building were 200 statues, 180 paintings, pillars, decorative panels, bronze allegorical figures holding candelabras, painted ceramics and glass, and grand staircases, as well as a theatre seating 3000 that was decorated with silk curtains, white-and-gold foliage wreaths, and immense mirrors.”
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