BHV Marais tried Shein to stay relevant — it destroyed the store's soul and forced a sale

In 2020, young entrepreneur Frédéric Merlin acquired BHV Marais from the Galeries Lafayette Group with an ambitious plan to reinvent the 170-year-old Parisian institution. His most controversial bet: bringing Chinese ultra-fast fashion giant Shein into the store as a concession, hoping to attract younger shoppers and shake up the department store's staid image.

The Shein experiment backfired catastrophically. Longtime BHV customers — who came for homewares, DIY tools, and curated French brands — were alienated by the presence of a brand synonymous with disposable fashion and environmental criticism. 'We sowed discord in the store,' Merlin later admitted to Les Echos. The controversy damaged BHV's identity without generating enough traffic to compensate. Staff were demoralised, and the store's carefully curated brand mix was compromised.

By June 2026, Merlin's SGM had run out of money and options. The company was sold to its own management in a leveraged buyout led by general manager Carl-Stéphane Contentin. Brookfield, the Canadian asset manager that owned the building, effectively controlled the outcome — one of its conditions was that Shein must leave. Merlin acknowledged that he had 'lacked the funds to execute the strategy' and that the Shein experiment was a failed bet that had accelerated the loss of the business.