REUTERS: The French may scoff at British cooking and fashion, but retailer Marks & Spencer (MKS.L) reckons France is yearning for its ready-made chicken tikka masala, gourmet chutney and sensible knickers.
The veteran British store opened a flagship store on Paris's Champs-Elysees on Thursday after a decade's absence from French soil, bringing the taste and feel of the British Isles to a city that sees itself as a world capital of food and fashion.
Britain's biggest clothing retailer, known too for its home goods and upmarket food, sparked howls of protest in 2001 when it shut up shop in France to stem losses in mainland Western Europe and focus on its home turf, leaving British expatriates and anglophile Parisians bereft.
The return to France is part of a new international strategy to open stores and websites in a handful of countries, rather than the scattergun approach of the past. Goods at the Paris store will be priced around 10 percent higher than in Britain, but M&S said they would be competitive for the French market.
"I am impatiently waiting for the reopening," said Karine, a French TV producer and blogger who preferred not to give her last name. "For me, it's a little like Proust and his madeleine."
While underwear is at the top of the list for many a female M&S shopper -- "They're the only ones to do super comfy underwear," said Karine -- food is also a major draw.
Karine's list of remembered favorite foods from the 127-year-old retailer included "crumpets, scones, pies, chutney, Indian food" -- foodstuffs rarely seen elsewhere in France. » | Alexandria Sage and Vicky Buffery | PARIS | Thursday, November 24, 2011
M&S Paris »
THE GUARDIAN: Marks & Spencer opens Paris store 10 years after 'tragic' exit: But expat brigade expecting Earl Grey tea and streaky bacon disappointed as chief executive Marc Bolland concentrates on selling lingerie and cashmere sweaters » | Kim Willsher in Paris | Thursday, November 24, 2011
THE DAILY TELEGRAPH: Marks & Spencer celebrates their return to France: Marks & Spencer has opened their first store in France for a decade. Henry Samuel went to the shop on the Champs-Elysées to find out more. ¶ The queue that snaked 150 yards up the Champs-Elysées towards the Arc de Triomphe was curiously orderly by French standards. ¶ But then at least half of its 500-odd occupants were British, mostly women, stoically waiting to get a foot into the door of the first Marks and Spencer outlet on French soil since the group shut up shop 10 years ago. ¶ No sooner were the doors of M&S's three-floor Gallic flagship flung open, however, calm gave way to an unseemly stampede for scotch eggs as expats and French anglophiles succumbed to their pent-up cravings for a string of British "delicacies". » | Henry Samuel, Paris | Thursday, November 24, 2011
