The manufacture and marketing of luxury goods: the marchands merciers, of late 17th- and 18th-century Paris

By the eighteenth century, Paris had an international reputation for luxuries, centred around the rue St-Honore. The marchands merciers played a crucial role within these luxury markets, marketing a range of imported and exotic goods, fashionable and novelty items. As well as providing retail outlets for ready-made goods, the mercers designed, adapted and transformed imports and the products of French workshops and manufactures. It was to this end that the mercers were encouraged by Jean-Baptiste Colbert as part of his economic policies for encouraging the luxury trades.