Hema

Another department store is the Hema.  The Hema department store is in a certain way competitor of the Bijenkorf and the V&D. The Hema company has stores in Holland, Belgium, Luxembourg, Germany and France. In Holland there are 455 stores and totally there are 534 branches, the foreign branches included. The Hema department store is specialized in products for daily use. Another specific aspect is that all products are exclusively produced for the Hema. The  abbriviation Hema stand for Dutch Unity Price company Amsterdam.  The First Hema branche is founded in Asterdam in 1926. The fisrt Hema store was a kind of stuntshop where products are very cheap. All products had same unit prices of 25 or 50 cents. Some years later the assortment was extended by articles with the unit price of 1 guilder. After the second world war Hema skipped the unit price philosophy. Until 1926 only rich people visited the department stores like the Bijenkorf.  All products where simly to expensive for the “normal” people who had less to spend. Until the establishment of the Hema store. Definitively the establishment of the Hema store meant a change: the Hema store was the shop for everyone.  The Hema is cheap and practically furnished and a sufficient assortment of products. For long time the image of the Hema was a poor people shop. Nowadays this image no longer exist because the Hema is the shop for everyone. As well as the other department stores the Hema had also a Restaurant, it is called The Hema Food Kiosk. Here you can buy the famous Hema sausage. Hema sell exclusively house brand products  like Miss Helen, a cosmetic product range.