Industry Retail Headquarters Dietikon Founded 1949 | Area served Switzerland Founder Gottlieb Duttweiler Parent organization Migros | |
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Number of locations 78 as of January 2016, 84 as per 2014 Products books, music, films, video games and electronic equipment Services stores, telephone orders and online distribution via internet and mobilephone apps Revenue CHF 121 Mio (as of January 2016) | ||
Ex Libris is a Swiss retail company in the media sector which operates 82 department stores in Switzerland. The group is owned by Migros which is Switzerland's largest retailer and claims to provide the largest online shop of Switzerland.
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History
Gottlieb Duttweiler and his wife Adele Duttweiler founded the present Migros group, and in 1949 Duttweiler shared with the former "Buchclub Ex Libris", which was integrated in the Migros group in 1956. Ex Libris provided licensed editions of the most important German-language publishers, inlcluding literature in the fields of art, history, sociology and children's literature at low prices. The adoption of a risk part facilitated the publication of works by young Swiss authors, and so the "ch" edition was started to promote cultural exchanges between the four Swiss language regions. From 1979 to 1983 the series "Frühling der Gegenwart" (Spring of the present) was published. It consisted of new editions of Swiss novels and short stories from 1890 to 1950 in 30 volumes. In 1952 Ex Libris began to sell music on vinyl; the original records were imported from England, France and USA, and were put in cases whose covers were designed by Swiss graphic designers. Initially, the edition comprised only Classical music, and later selected dance music, jazz and pop. Around 1990, the last stocks were sold out in the Ex Libris stores.
Sortiment
In the present days, Ex Libris offers also films on DVD and Blu-ray, as well as licensed downloads of books and music, in its stores in Switzerland and by its online webshop. Ex Libris claims to be the largest Swiss online shop for books, music, movies, games, and electronics, and features a network in the German-speaking area of Switzerland. In the online shop, the Migros subsidiary provides a multimedia full range of more than 6 million products, plus more than 10 million digital products for download. Each month, more than one million customers use the online shop via the mobilephone app. Furthermore, Ex Libris offers Video on Demand since 2015.