History
The first Carrefour store opened on 1 January 1958 in suburban Annecy near a crossroads (carrefour in French). The group was created by Marcel Fournier, Denis Defforey and Jacques Defforey and grew into a chain from this first sales outlet. In 1995 it merged with Promodès, known as Continent, one of its major competitors in the French market.
Marcel Fournier, Denis Defforey and Jacques Defforey had attended several seminars in the United States led by "the Pope of retail" Bernardo Trujillo, who influenced them to move forward with Carrefour idea.
The Carrefour group was the first in Europe to open a hypermarket, a large supermarket and a department store under the same roof. They opened their first hypermarket on 15 June 1963 in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, near Paris in France.
In April 1976, Carrefour launched a private label Produits libres (free products – libre meaning free in the sense of liberty as opposed to gratis) line of fifty foodstuffs, including oil, biscuits (crackers and cookies), milk, and pasta, sold in unbranded white packages at substantially lower prices.
In September 2009, Carrefour updated its logo.
In May 2011, Carrefour reviewed its situation under conditions of stagnant growth and increasing competition in France from rivals including Casino Guichard-Perrachon SA, and planned to invest €1.5 billion ($2.1 billion) to change the supermarket with the new concept of Carrefour Planet in Western Europe.
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“We aspire to be something more than stupid and timid chattels, pretending to read history and our Bibles, but desecrating every house and every day we breathe in.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
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—Bertolt Brecht (1898–1956)
“The history of our era is the nauseating and repulsive history of the crucifixion of the procreative body for the glorification of the spirit.”
—D.H. (David Herbert)