KaDeWe, Department Store of the West in Berlin

20 December 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Berlin, Shopping Reading Time:  7 minutes

KaDeWe in 2013 © Beek100/cc-by-sa-3.0

KaDeWe in 2013 © Beek100/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Kaufhaus des Westens (English “Department Store of the West”), usually abbreviated to KaDeWe, is a department store in Berlin. With over 60,000 square metres of selling space and more than 380,000 articles available, it is the largest department store in Continental Europe. It attracts 40,000 to 50,000 visitors every day.   read more…

Harrods in London

1 December 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, House of the Month, London, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

© Symphony

© Symphony

Harrods is an upmarket department store located in Brompton Road in Knightsbridge, in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in London. The Harrods motto is Omnia Omnibus Ubique—All Things for All People, Everywhere. Several of its departments, including the seasonal Christmas department and the Food Halls, are world famous. The shop’s 330 departments offer a wide range of products and services. Products on offer include clothing for women, men, children and infants, electronics, jewellery, sporting gear, bridal trousseau, pets and pet accessories, toys, food and drink, health and beauty items, packaged gifts, stationery, housewares, home appliances, furniture, and much more. A representative sample of shop services includes 32 restaurants, serving everything from high tea to tapas to pub food to haute cuisine; a personal shopping-assistance programme known as “By Appointment”; a watch repair service; a tailor; a dispensing pharmacy; a beauty spa and salon; a barbers shop; private events planning and catering; food delivery; a wine steward; bespoke “picnic” hampers and gift boxes; bespoke cakes.   read more…

Viktualienmarkt in Munich

29 November 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Bon appétit, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

Viktualienmarkt © Helmlechner/cc-by-sa-3.0

Viktualienmarkt © Helmlechner/cc-by-sa-3.0

The Viktualienmarkt is a daily food market and a square in the center of Munich. The Viktualienmarkt developed from an original farmers’ market to a popular market for gourmets. In an area covering 22,000 m2 (240,000 sq ft), 140 stalls and shops offer flowers, exotic fruit, game, poultry, spices, cheese, fish, juices and so on.   read more…

Macy’s

3 September 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, New York City, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

Macy's plaque at Herald Square, New York © Wikijazz/cc-by-sa-3.0

Macy’s plaque at Herald Square, New York © Wikijazz/cc-by-sa-3.0

Macy’s, originally R. H. Macy & Co., is a mid-range to upscale chain of department stores owned by American multinational corporation Macy’s, Inc. It is one of two divisions owned by the company, with the other being the upscale Bloomingdale’s. As of January 2014, it operates 850 department stores locations in the United States, Guam and Puerto Rico, with a prominent Herald Square flagship location in Midtown Manhattan, New York City. It also has eSpot ZoomShops kiosks in over 300 store locations selling consumer electronics.   read more…

Theme Week Moscow – GUM department store on the Red Square

2 July 2014 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Shopping Reading Time:  8 minutes

© Otets/cc-by-sa-3.0-lu

© Otets/cc-by-sa-3.0-lu

GUM (an abbreviation of the Russian Glavnyi Universalnyi Magazin; literally “main universal store”) is the name of the main department store in many cities of the former Soviet Union, known as State Department Store during the Soviet times. Similarly named stores were found in some Soviet republics and post-Soviet states. The most famous GUM is the large store in the Kitay-gorod part of Moscow facing Red Square, opposite of the Lenin Mausoleum and the Kremlin. It is currently a shopping mall. Prior to the 1920s, the location was known as the Upper Trading Rows. Nearby, also facing Red Square, is a building very similar to GUM, known formerly as the Middle Trading Rows. It is about the same size as a large North American shopping mall.   read more…

Galeries Lafayette

1 December 2013 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, House of the Month, Paris / Île-de-France, Shopping Reading Time:  6 minutes

Galeries Lafayette Haussmann © flickr.com - zoetnet/cc-by-2.0

Galeries Lafayette Haussmann © flickr.com – zoetnet/cc-by-2.0

The Galeries Lafayette is an upmarket French department store company located on Boulevard Haussmann in the 9th arrondissement of Paris. In 2011, Galeries Lafayette recorded earnings of 2,957 million euro. It is a part of the company Groupe Galeries Lafayette. In 1895, Théophile Bader and his cousin Alphonse Kahn opened a fashion store in a small haberdasher‘s shop at the corner of rue La Fayette and the Chaussée d’Antin. In 1896, their company purchased the entire building at n°1 rue La Fayette; in 1905 they acquired the buildings at n°38, 40 and 42, boulevard Haussmann and n°15 rue de la Chaussée d’Antin. Bader commissioned the architect Georges Chedanne and his pupil Ferdinand Chanut to design the store at the Haussmann location, where a glass and steel dome and Art Nouveau staircases were finished in 1912.   read more…

The Underground City of Montreal

24 April 2013 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Shopping Reading Time:  8 minutes

Complexe Les Ailes © Oleksandr

Complexe Les Ailes © Oleksandr

Montreal’s Underground City (officially RÉSO or La Ville Souterraine) is the set of interconnected complexes (both above and below ground) in and around Downtown Montreal, Quebec, Canada. It is also known as the indoor city (ville intérieure), and is one of the largest underground complexes in the world.   read more…

Le Bon Marché, the first department store in the world

4 April 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: Living, Working, Building, Paris / Île-de-France, Shopping Reading Time:  4 minutes

Le Bon Marché © François Rejeté

Le Bon Marché © François Rejeté

Le Bon Marché (“the good market”, or “the good deal” in French) is the name of one of the most famous department stores in Paris, France. It is sometimes regarded as the first department store in the world. Although this depends on what is meant by ‘department store’, it may have had the first specially-designed building for a store in Paris. The founder was Aristide Boucicaut.   read more…

First German department store ever located in Vladivostok: Kunst & Albers, a success story from Hamburg

3 January 2011 | Author/Destination: | Rubric: General, Shopping Reading Time:  8 minutes

Kunst & Albers © ZDF

Kunst & Albers © ZDF

It is always interesting and exciting to learn more about outstanding pioneering and entrepreneurial efforts. An incredible success story began in Vladivostok, with the rise of the German trading house Kunst & Albers, which supplied South Siberia supplied with goods from all over the world. The first German department store ever, it was located at the end of the world and there it still stands. The building housed not only all sales departments, the accounting, banking and shipping departments and the shipment of goods, upstairs was even room for living quarters for employees. When the masonry structure of the present-day State Department Store, GUM, replaced the old wooden building in 1885, it immediately became a Vladivostok landmark. Today it remains one of the finest examples of the city’s commercial architecture. Known officially as the Kunst and Albers Trading House in the past, it was one of the oldest masonry multi-story buildings in the region. Having met in China, the two German entrepreneurs Gustav Kunst and Gustav Albers decided to go to Vladivostok and establish a trading house together (1864). Supported by the Deutscher Bank and different companies in Germany, Great Britain, and Japan, the Kunst and Albers Trading House soon grew into the largest trading house in Eastern Siberia with 16 affiliates in Russia, five in Manchuria, and one in Japan. Living in Hamburg, Kunst, who served as the head of the company, supplied mostly German commodities. The enormously beneficial impact of the trading house on commerce and everyday life in the region is impossible to exaggerate.   read more…

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