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M&S to open on the Champs-Élysées

Retail giant set to return in September after 10-year absence, but will it sell food?

MARKS & Spencer is returning to Paris. While the retail giant has refused to comment on reports that it was making a French comeback, it has been confirmed by the property firm Cushman & Wakefield, which organised the lease.

M&S is taking over the three-storey, 1,000 square metre Esprit store at 100 Avénue des Champs-Elysées, on the most expensive side of the capital's premier shopping street, where prices are around €10,000 per square metre.

Paris commercial experts say that such a store would cost M&S €10million a year in rent.

The Paris prefecture said it had received no application from the company for a licence to sell food.

The Esprit store closed its doors on February 6 and is being readied for a refurbishment for a September opening. It is 10 years since M&S closed down its 38 stores in Europe, of which 18 were in France, including the Paris store on Boulevard Haussmann.

It was its first one outside the UK when it opened in 1975, and its closure sparked sit-ins from Parisians and expats alike. The store counted Princess Grace of Monaco among its customers.

Parisian shopper Françoise Robert summed it up when she told a reporter in 2001: "This shop was a little piece of England. A great advertisement for England. The staff were always very friendly, not like in those other places."

Luc Vandevelde, who was then the chairman of M&S, saw it differently and said the pullout, which also closed stores in Belgium, Luxembourg, Holland, Spain, Portugal and Germany, was "one of the most important announcements in M&S's history".

Now, however, new chief executive Marc Bolland is rethinking the company's dependence on the UK market. He described M&S at the launch of its first-half report for 2010 as "essentially a UK retailer that exports" and added: "We have an opportunity to become a more international retailer."

Europe is the missing link in the global M&S jigsaw; the company already has 337 shops in 41 countries and has already spoken of growth plans in India and China. It opened its third store in China, in Shanghai, in December.

International sales bring in just over £520m and Mr Bolland sees this rising over the next four years to between £800m and £1bn.

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