HDS celebrates its 150th Birthday

In June 2002, Hachette Distribution Services celebrated 150 years of serving travelers – that’s right, it was in 1852, during a train trip, that Louis Hachette came up with a daring idea: Why not open a network of “railway-station bookshops” to make travel time more pleasant? Thus was born the first such bookshop in the Gare de Lyon, the early ancestor of the outlets that are now recognized from New York to Warsaw under the Relay brand.

Hachette Distribution Services, which now does business in 19 countries, is an international, specialized distribution group with a network of 3,600 stores and a portfolio made up of such well-known brand names as Relay and Virgin Megastore.

From its first station bookshops to Relays in major airports the world over, the group’s teams have in fact written an entire page in the history of commerce with regard to the sale of cultural products both in France and abroad.