Aristide Boucicaut

In 1834 he moved to Paris and went to work in a novelty store on rue de Bac, the Petit Saint-Thomas, which sold women's clothing, hats, fabrics and other items.

He became Videau's partner, and put his new novel ideas of marketing to work; buying in bulk and selling with very low profit margins; fixed prices; allowing the customers to browse and touch the clothing; seasonal sales; reduced prices on selected items, elaborate window displays, and newspaper advertising.

Videau was not comfortable with Boucicault's flamboyant style of salesmanship, and on 31 January 1851 he sold his share of the store to Boucicaut.

[citation needed] Boucicaut introduced a number of marketing innovations; a system of fixed prices with associated discounts instead of the previous system of haggling over prices, then common in dry goods stores;[3] a reading room for husbands while their wives shopped; prizes and entertainment for children; the first mail-order catalog, in 1867; and seasonal sales, including the "white sale", designed to sell sheets and bedding in the winter when sales were slow.

He had met a French entrepreneur, Henry-François Maillard, who had made a fortune in New York, who told Boucicaut about an American businessman named Alexander Turney Stewart who in 1846 had constructed the Marble Palace on Broadway in New York, the first multi-story building devoted entirely to selling merchandise, using an iron frame and large plate glass windows to increase light and space.

Their son had died young; Madame Boucicaut left the major part of the family fortune to the Bureau of Public Assistance and Hospitals of Paris.

Émile Zola's novel Au Bonheur des Dames was inspired by the Bon Marché; he wrote to the store in March 1882 and was given a complete tour.