PARIS — It was the ceiling that sealed the deal for Arthur Gerbi when selecting the location for the second outpost of the famous Marais retailer Merci.
He had been looking for a “sparring partner” for the original location, a new place to play with his overflow of ideas. When he came across the disused post office at 19 Rue de Richelieu, it had been divvied up and fitted with dropped ceilings for decades.
Gerbi suspected the building held some architectural secrets, so when he uncovered the arched glass ceiling, he knew it would be Merci’s second home.
“I’m not Sir Edmund Hillary, but when he climbed Mount Everest, it was because it was there,” Gerbi joked. “We’re a project-driven company, and when we found this place, we just did it.”
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The glass roof is reminiscent of the Marais store’s similar dome, but Gerbi was clear that he did not want to copy-paste the original’s interior design for this new incarnation. With its wide and rectangular space, it recalls an artist’s loft in Manhattan’s SoHo.
Gerbi recounts a tale of his mother Danielle in ’80s New York, when she strayed through a secret door in an art gallery only to come across Jean-Michel Basquiat and Andy Warhol playing cards. Gerbi wanted to capture that spirit of discovery in the 6,500-square-foot new store.
“You have all these things that make it very New York,” he said. Architect Jules Mesny-Deschamps opened up the space from what had been the customer entrance all the way to what had been the delivery dock. The store stretches across the block, to a second entrance on Rue Molière.
At the Rue de Richelieu entrance, a copper checkout counter crafted by Piet Hein Eek, the Dutch craftsman famous for his work with reclaimed materials, sits front and center. The shelves are lined with books, art supplies and small objects ranging from umbrellas to Jellicat plushies.
Up a small staircase is the heart of the store — shelves filled with stacks of plates, glasses and dishes, cookbooks propped up between pots and pans. Common objects like Opinel knives are paired with Japanese measuring cups.
“We tried to put it in an environment where it doesn’t look like a hardware store, but more like a candy store,” Gerbi said of the eclectic selection from American, Japanese and French makers. That space is anchored by a big blue table, lacquered in Japanese urushi by artist Jo Nagasaka.
Walking under half a red Fiat — a nod to the famous car parked in Merci’s courtyard in the Marais — the fashion selection spans the main floor. Brands include indie labels Nothing Written, La Fetiche, Mysayang, Pas de Calais and Sarahwear. The jeans bar sits to the side, carrying Carhartt, Levi’s and Re/Done, while jewelry in wood and glass cases is perched opposite.
The dressing rooms are closed off with curtains embroidered by Marseille-based artist Sarah Espeute, while trompe-l’œil artist Emma Jager has sketched hangers and hooks around the walls. They were all plucked from Gerbi’s orbit of creatives.
“I’m just like a centrifuge of artists, of brands, of trends. I just put them all in and spin very fast,” he said.
Merci was founded in 2009 and Gerbi’s family, founders of French brand Gérard Darel, took it over in 2013. Gerbi himself stepped into the chief executive officer’s role.
“It’s like I adopted a child,” he said of taking over the then-four-year-old brand. Ever since, it’s been a series of lessons about nature versus nurture for the business school graduate, shaping the store’s values. He’s arrived at the conclusion that Merci is “the opposite of marketing.”
“This whole place is all about curation. It’s about ‘coup de cœur.’ It’s about meeting people that have good energy, that have a product that makes sense. We hear their story, and if it makes sense we say yes,” he said. “But we don’t do hype brands.”
Gerbi positions the Merci philosophy as “post-luxury.”
“Luxury is something you buy for somebody else, to show that you belong to a certain group or to a certain crowd,” he said. “At Merci, you buy something that truly makes you happy, and most of the time there’s no logo or not a big logo. It’s not about saying that you paid a big sum of money for it.”
Marketing divides people into target categories and micro-trends, he believes, while Merci aims for a more happenstance mix.
“Merci is about speaking to everybody with a very Parisian spirit, our Parisian spirit — not the global and mainframe ‘Parisian’ spirit — but how we live ourselves,” he said. “It’s not about excluding people.”
To that end he wants the store to draw a wide swath of visitors, from the fashion week flock that frequents the Marais shop, to neighborhood locals. Rue de Richelieu is undergoing a bit of a retail renaissance, with hip bag brand Rive Droite opening across the street last November.
The surrounding streets house several offices, and the new Merci door is just steps from both the gardens of Palais Royal and the ramen mecca of Rue Saint Anne. Gerbi’s in-laws live nearby.
“We’re proud of having this mix of people that would never bump into each other except that they would come to Merci,” he said.
Downstairs, shoes from Paraboot, Emme Parson and Anne Thomas are perched on shiny copper shelving, though Gerbi hopes it won’t stay that way for long. He wants a rougher, lived-in look. “We’re all about the patina,” he said.
Customers can sit on wooden benches recovered from a Swiss ski chalet to try on a pair, or on a deep couch piled with pillows. It’s all about recreating an apartment-style feel.
At the back sits the beauty section, filled with ranges from La Bonne Brosse, Doré and Augustinus Bader, flanked by racks of fluffy towels.
While Gerbi would love a store in New York or even Tokyo someday, he’s clear that Rue de Richelieu is not the opening shot of a worldwide rollout program. Any additional business development is far off, and even then, would be unique to its location.
“I think the worst thing is to copy your own self,” he said. “We don’t see a Merci on every corner that’s some kind of clone, but we see customers discovering us on Instagram or on the website, planning to come to see us, and then discovering what we do.”
He sees the website as more of an old-fashioned catalog to encourage physical foot traffic instead of some grand omnichannel plan.
Gerbi points out that the “aggressive strategy” of online multibrand retailers largely faltered, citing Farfetch as an example. “Most of the time [a multibrand online retailer is] doomed, because whatever the turnover you will do, there will never be enough margin for you to be sustainable and profitable.”
The online multibrand retail model doesn’t make sense for small designers either, particularly as they often rely on subtle cues and customer loyalty. “What value are you creating? It’s just stock trading,” he said. “What we are trying to do is create something that’s more than just a transaction.”
Merci launched its own label with a watch in 2017, a move that “completely changed the economics,” said Gerbi, making the multibrand business model more steady and sustainable. The in-house label has now expanded into ready-to-wear, accessories and homegoods such as blankets and pillows. There’s a Merci couch, too, plus fragrances and candles.
The private brand has embarked on several collaborations, the latest a partnership with L.A. phenomenon Erewhon, the health food supermarket that has morphed into a lifestyle brand, which launched on Monday. It features sweaters and bags, among other collectible items.
“Being a multicategory-maker and a multicategory curator and mixing this whole thing together is really what we love,” said Gerbi, summing up his 360 view of retail. He eschews the word “concept store”; instead Merci “is about the art of living.”
“Do you know what the real name of Merci should be? ‘Merci la vie,’” he added. “This store is a way to celebrate life.”
