Lagardere Travel Retail

About Lagardere Travel Retail

The story of Lagardère Travel Retail begins not in an airport, but in a Parisian bookstore in 1826. Louis Hachette founded a publishing house that would become a French institution. A pivotal moment came in 1852 when Hachette won a concession to operate bookstores in France's railway stations, planting the seed for the travel retail business. For decades, the company focused on its core publishing and distribution activities under the Hachette name. The modern chapter starts with Jean-Luc Lagardère, who took control of Hachette in 1981. He merged Hachette with his industrial conglomerate Matra in 1992, creating the Lagardère group. This new entity began to aggressively expand the old railway bookstore concept. A significant move was the creation of the Relay brand in the 1980s, which became a global name in travel essentials. The company pushed into duty-free and food service, acquiring other operators to build a global footprint. A major strategic refocus occurred in 2018, when the Lagardère group decided to concentrate on its two most powerful divisions: Lagardère Publishing and Lagardère Travel Retail. This led to the sale of other media and sports assets. By shedding other businesses, the company solidified its identity as a global leader in the parallel industries of content and travel retail, a journey that started nearly two centuries ago with a single bookstore in a Paris train station.