New owner and location for Brussels bookstore Filigranes
The founder of concept store Mayfair is taking over the Brussels bookshop Filigranes. The branch on Avenue des Arts will move to Boulevard de Waterloo in February.
Filigranes has three branches: two in Brussels and one in Knokke at the coast. The store on Avenue des Arts in Brussels will move to the site of a former BMW garage next to Mayfair. The shop on Avenue Louis Lepoutre in Ixelles will remain at its current location but the bookshop in Knokke will not be kept.
31 of the company's 45 employees will be taken on for the new project. New owner Mehmet Sandurac tabled a bid 305,000 euros for the takeover and he intends to invest 1.5 million euros in the project, according to his lawyer.
Passion for reading
Last Wednesday, two bids for the business had been filed with the French-speaking business court in Brussels. One came from Sandurac, the other from a group of investors that included Denis Knoops, the former CEO of Delhaize Belgium. 80 per cent of the staff voted in favour of Sandurac's bid, because this was “much more concrete”.
Intell, the company that operated the bookshops, had initiated a transfer procedure under judicial authority. Last year, it recorded a loss of about 1 million euros. Founder and former director Marc Filipson stepped aside in 2022 after staff complained about moral and sexual harassment within the company.
“I am delighted that Mehmet Sandurac's project has been chosen and that this story continues in a beautiful way,” Filipson told Le Soir.
“The idea that books should be integrated into an environment like Mayfair, which allows the continuation of welcoming writers, and find their place in a wider project, is what I have always wanted for Filigranes. The most important thing is to be able to continue to welcome the public and share the passion for reading.”
The interior of the Filigranes bookstore in Etterbeek, Brussels © BELGA PHOTO LAURIE DIEFFEMBACQ
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