Businesses

Activity during the past year

• Send

Over the past year, Lagardère Services pursued development in three main areas: retail outlets serving the needs of travellers, convenience retail outlets offering both products and services, and press distribution to points of sale.

Retail outlets serving the needs of travellers

Lagardère Services specializes in providing retail services to travellers through such chains as Relay, Newslink and Aelia, and has opened new outlets in airports and train stations in the 18 countries where its numerous trade-name stores are located. With the Relay chain, Lagardère Services operates the leading point-of-sale network for press publications and current-interest products. With the opening of numerous new outlets (mainly in Germany, Spain, Australia, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and the Serbian Republic), Relay offers a growing number of travellers an extensive range of products designed to meet their travel needs, including newspapers, magazines, books, candy, souvenirs, food products and more.

The brand’s various retail formats – Relay Books, Relay Services and Relay Bistro – fill out the chain’s traditional product range in several countries (including France, Switzerland, Poland and Belgium), providing travellers with a wide range of spur-of-the-moment products or offering them food service and other conveniences. In addition to its Relay stores in nearly 80 international locations, its Newslink stores in Australia and Singapore and a certain number of specialized new concept stores, Lagardère Services’ airport operations also include stores that concentrate on duty-free sales via Aelia, France’s leading airport retailer.

Aelia now operates in airports in other countries as well (Belfast and Luton airports in Great Britain and Krakow and Warsaw airports in Poland), managing 150 points of sale in 18 European airports. In addition to such franchise outlets as Virgin and Hermès, Aelia has a portfolio of its own retail trade names, such as Pure & Rare, Beauty Unlimited, French Days, The Gourmet Shop and Cosmopole. It operates some of these outlets, with partners that include Aéroports de Paris, via the alcohol, tobacco and perfume concessions at Paris’ Orly South and West terminals and terminals 1, 2 and 3 of Roissy-Charles de Gaulle airport, as well as via gourmet concessions in certain other terminals.
In train stations and airports, Lagardère Services also operates numerous stores under the Virgin trade name specializing in music, books, magazines and small electronics (in France, Australia, Germany, Canada and the United States). The Découvrir chain in France and the Discover chain in Spain, America and Australia also offer tourists products specifically focused on the attractions or regions where they are located.
Plans are underway to expand each of these trade names in 2008 as part of Lagardère Services’ overall development plan in this strategic area.

Convenience retail outlets offering products and services

In many Western and Central European countries, Lagardère Services is developing the convenience store concept under several trade names to offer consumers a wide range of products and services.
The Inmedio chain, for example, now operates in Hungary, Poland, the Czech Republic and Romania, offering a wide selection of magazines, books and spur-of-the-moment products.
In Switzerland, in addition to the long-established Naville trade name and the famous Payot Libraire bookshops, the local subsidiary of Lagardère Services has concluded a partnership agreement with the Paul franchise to experiment with a new convenience retail format.
The latter franchise was also selected for development by HDS CZ Retail, the group’s Czech subsidiary.
The development of trade-name retail outlets with strong brand recognition in shopping centres and transportation hubs is an important objective of Lagardère Services’ retail sales activities.

Press distribution, wholesaling and import-export activities

Supplying points of sale with newspapers and magazines is an indispensable function of the retail press business. Lagardère Services fulfils this function in 15 countries, where it operates at two levels.
As a world leader in the distribution of national periodicals, Lagardère Services is the No. 1 distributor in the United States, French-speaking Switzerland, Spain and Hungary, as well as operating in Poland. In many countries, Lagardère Services supplies chains of convenience stores: Lapker in Hungary (with 13,000 points of sale, including 1,200 wholly-owned stores) and SGEL in Spain (with 18,000 points of sale).
The Curtis Circulation Company, the leading national magazine distributor in North America, operates a network of independent wholesalers and manages the sale of the magazines it represents to North America’s largest retail chains.
Lagardère Services is also a leading distributor of imported international publications in 11 countries (Belgium, Bulgaria, Canada, Spain, the United States, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Romania, Serbia-Montenegro, Slovakia and Switzerland).

Leading positions

• A unique network of nearly 4,000 stores in 18 countries throughout the world
• Aelia is France’s leading airport retailer
• No. 1 international press distributor in Belgium, Canada, Spain, Hungary and the Czech Republic
• No. 1 national press distributor in the United States (Curtis Circulation Company), Belgium (AMP), French-speaking Switzerland (Naville), Spain (SGEL) and Hungary (Lapker)
• Over 50,000 press outlets in Europe and 180,000 in North America are supplied daily by HDS
• A unique network of 3,850 retail outlets worldwide