Battle For Control of Parfums Chanel
In 1924, Chanel made an agreement with the Wertheimer brothers, Pierre and Paul, directors of the eminent perfume house Bourjois since 1917, creating a corporate entity, "Parfums Chanel." The Wertheimers agreed to provide full financing for production, marketing and distribution of Chanel No. 5. The Wertheimers would receive a seventy percent share of the company, and Théophile Bader, founder of the Paris department store, Galeries Lafayette, would receive twenty percent. Bader had been instrumental in brokering the business connection by introducing Chanel to Pierre Wertheimer at the Longchamps races in 1922. For ten percent of the stock, Chanel licensed her name to "Parfums Chanel" and removed herself from involvement in all business operations. Displeased with the arrangement, Chanel worked for more than twenty years to gain full control of "Parfums Chanel." She proclaimed that Pierre Wertheimer was "the bandit who screwed me."
World War II brought with it the Nazi seizure of all Jewish owned property and business enterprises, providing Chanel with the opportunity to gain the full monetary fortune generated by "Parfums Chanel" and its most profitable product, Chanel No. 5. The directors of "Parfums Chanel," the Wertheimers, were Jewish, and Chanel used her position as an "Aryan" to petition German officials to legalize her right to sole ownership.
On May 5, 1941, she wrote to the government administrator charged with ruling on the disposition of Jewish financial assets. Her grounds for proprietary ownership were based on the claim that "Parfums Chanel" "is still the property of Jews" and had been legally "abandoned" by the owners.
- "I have, an indisputable right of priority ...the profits that I have received from my creations since the foundation of this business ...are disproportionate ... you can help to repair in part the prejudices I have suffered in the course of these seventeen years."
Chanel was not aware that the Wertheimers, anticipating the forthcoming Nazi mandates against Jews had, in May 1940, legally turned control of "Parfums Chanel" over to a Christian, French businessman and industrialist Felix Amiot. At the end of World War II, Amiot turned “Parfums Chanel" back into the hands of the Wertheimers.
Read more about this topic: Chanel No. 5
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