Chic, Trendy, Romantic, Creative or Original?

By Molly Moore
Washington Post Foreign Service
Monday, January 21, 2008

PARIS

On St.-Germain-des-Pres, one of the most chic streets in Paris, pedestrians eyed shopping coach Katia Grimault with suspicion.

She smiled. She was friendly. She offered free advice on where to shop.

It was just after 2 p.m. Office workers were in a rush to get back to their desks after a late lunch. Shoppers were on their second wind.

"At first, people are very wary," said Grimault, 46, attired in the snow-white down jacket and ink-black pants of an official Paris shopping coach. "They're not expecting such friendly behavior. Parisians are, um, you know -- cold."

Paris is trying to change that image. Hoping to lure more visitors into the city during its slow winter months and put more euros into the cash registers of a faltering retail economy during January, the City of Lights this month launched a marketing campaign to make itself the City of Shoppers.

"It's not very French to promote France as a destination for shopping," confessed Paul Roll, tourism director for the city best known for the Eiffel Tower, Mona Lisa and haute cuisine. "The subject is usually culture, or gastronomy -- but not shopping."

Tourism officials first had to try to counteract the city's reputation for having sales clerks who are notoriously ambivalent, if not downright hostile, toward customers.

It recruited students from the International Concierge Institute and other local colleges, and sent them to a one-day etiquette school.

"We were told that France is ranked 53rd in the world for kindness and a welcoming attitude," said Ryma Bououden, a 23-year-old pharmacy student working a white plastic information tent just off the main shopping drag of St.-Germain-des-Pres. "They said, 'You have to make up for it and be extra nice.' " She turned to offer a free shopping guide to a woman wrapped in a drab brown wool coat and clutching a red umbrella.

The woman looked quizzically at Bououden, glanced at the proffered booklet and muttered, "No thanks. I'm too old for that."

Bououden's smile never faltered. By 2:20 p.m., she'd been smiling steadily for more than four hours.

A woman with a sharp nose and a determined look approached the booth. Bououden stepped toward her, multilingual shopping guide in hand, smile on face.

"Shopping?" snapped the woman. "I don't have time to shop. I'm looking for Internet assistance."

Still smiling and well armed with information, Bououden handed her a mini-Yellow Pages.

Xavier Delage, leader of this neighborhood's flock of white-jacketed advisers, stood nearby. He considers his coaches to be the concierge service of the sidewalks.

"We are here to meet the clients, just like a concierge in a hotel," said Delage, 43, a student at the International Concierge Institute. "We consider each shop like a room in a hotel."

And like a concierge, he believes his mission is to guide the client to the destination best suited to his or her personality and pocketbook.

City tourism officials came up with five proposed shopping routes: Chic, Trendy, Romantic, Creative and Original. To help the visitor figure out just what kind of shopper he or she might be, the guide distributed by the coaches offers a personalized shopping test. Just answer the question: "Which Parisian are you?"

If you like to shop at French fashion houses, sip champagne at hip bars, spend your nights in a French palace and your cultural haunt of choice is museums, you're on the right path shopping the "Chic" route, which includes St.-Germaine-des-Pres, the Louvre and the Champs-Elysee.

If you prefer flea markets, staying at offbeat hotels and roaming through "artist squats to unearth a hidden treasure," the guide directs you to the "Original" route, which rambles from Montmartre in the north through the Marais and to the Place d'Italie.

With the end of the shopping coach experiment this past week, the coaches will be absent from the streets until the summer sales, but city officials hope the special routes will become a shopping fixture. Bououden spotted two women on bicycles approaching her booth. She stepped toward them, smiling, guidebook in her outstretched hand.

"Oh, this is great!" declared one of the bicyclists, flipping through the pages. Her friend nodded in emphatic agreement.

Bououden beamed. It was 2:45 p.m. She had two satisfied customers. She tucked their guides into a small white-and-pink plastic pouch with a long pink strap.

They pedaled away, giggling and chatting.

Bououden spotted her next potential client, an extremely tall African man. She smiled. She offered him a pink-and-white plastic pouch stuffed with shopping guides.

He smiled back uncertainly. He thanked her. He walked away, neon pink strap draped over his shoulder.