Manor AG is a Swiss department store chain with its headquarter in Basel. With an estimated market share of 59%, Manor is Switzerland’s biggest department-store chain. The Manor Group extends to the 71 Manor stores employing some 11,300 personnel, the Athleticum sports goods chain and Switzerland’s FLY furniture shops. The Group, which is owned by Geneva-based Maus Frères Holding, generated total sales of CHF 3.335 billion in 2009. Manor is positioned in the medium price segment.
Brothers Ernest and Henri Maus and Léon Nordmann opened their first department store in Lucerne in 1902, under the “Léon Nordmann” name. The more familiar “Manor”—a combination of the founders’ Maus and Nordmann surnames—did not appear until a new corporate identity was adopted around 1965. All the company’s department stores in German-speaking Switzerland have borne the Manor name since 1994, and all the stores in the rest of the country have carried the name since September 2000. The standardised name has provided Manor with clearer identification, greater market transparency, simplified communications and a nationwide presence.