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Théodore-Ernest Cognacq was born on 2nd October 1839 in Saint-Martin-de-Ré (Charente-Maritime). At the age of 12, the financial ruin and subsequent death of Cognacq’s father forced him to leave school and begin earning a living as a travelling salesman working between La Rochelle and Bordeaux. He later moved to Paris, seeking his fortune in the great department stores of the age: turned down by the Magasins du Louvre, he found work at La Nouvelle Héloïse, where he also met his future wife Marie-Louise Jaÿ (1838-1925). Cognacq worked in a number of shops in Paris before setting out on his own on Rue Turbigo in 1867: Au Petit Bénéfice. He swiftly went bankrupt, quit Paris to try his luck elsewhere in France, and finally returned to the capital working as a street hawker, setting up shop under the second arch of the Pont-Neuf, formerly the location of the ‘Samaritaine’ hydraulic pump (destroyed in 1813), which earned him the nickname ‘Napoleon’. At the age of 30, having succeeded in saving up a little money, Cognacq took a sub-let on the premises occupied by a café on the corner of the Rue du Pont-Neuf and the Rue de la Monnaie, which now became the new Au Petit Bénéfice. His plan was to lure in some of the customers of the nearby Halles market and the department store À la Belle Jardinière, which opened on the other side of the Rue du Pont Neuf in 1867 (now a Conforama). This time, the business was to be a success: in 1871 Cognacq took out a proper lease on the converted café, and took on two employees. The following year he married Marie-Louise Jaÿ, who at the time was working as a shop girl in the dressmaking department of Bon Marché. Through hard work and saving the couple eventually succeeded in buying their store, by now renamed La Samaritaine (the very first La Samaritaine store, now occupied by Kenzo, Séphora and Zara) and turning over some 300,000 Francs per year. Business prospered, thanks in no small part to the innovative sales techniques of the owners (firm, clearly-displayed prices, the option of trying on the clothes before buying…): turnover rose to 600,000F in 1882, then 40,000,000F by 1895; in 1925, sales broke the billion mark.
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