Tally Weijl - History

History

All began in 1984 when Tally Elfassi-Weijl created her first fashion designs to bridge the waiting time for the Hotel School in Lausanne. In a small garage in the Swiss municipality of Lohn (Canton of Solothurn), she designed twelve collections per year while studying. Together with Beat Grüring, the company founders – still in their own car at the time – supplied the large Swiss fashion stores and boutiques. The revolutionary aspect was that the sexy trends by TALLY WEiJL were always in the fashion stores within two to four weeks. “Just in time” was their key to success. The two company founders soon had the urge to also sell their new sexy collections in their own stores in order to even be closer to their customers. As a result, the first TALLY WEiJL store opened in Fribourg (Switzerland) in 1987. In 1993, the newly established TALLY WEiJL company entered the retail business at a very early stage, developed its own store concept and opened further stores in Switzerland with its first franchise partners. The founders enjoyed what they did and soon ventured into new markets. In 1997, they opened their first store in Germany and three years later the first Polish store. In 2000, already more than 50 TALLY WEiJL stores existed in Europe. In 2004, TALLY WEiJL created its first advertising campaign with the “totally sexy” slogan. This is how the brand identity evolved on the basis of the existing TALLY WEiJL values. In the last few years, TALLY WEiJL has opened new stores throughout all of Europe, at times more than a hundred per year. Today, TALLY WEiJL has more than 760 stores in 31 countries.