Bookstore chain back in hands of original owners

The eight bookshops across Belgium that were known as De Slegte before being taken over by the Dutch chain Polare will revert back to their original name and be run by the original family owners, headed by Jan Bernard de Slegte.

De Slegte was founded in Rotterdam at the turn of the 20th century, grew to a chain of bookstores covering the whole of the Netherlands and first opened in Flanders in 1959 in Antwerp. Specialising in the sale of second-hand books, the company suffered from competition from the internet, finally launching its own website in 2010. The period saw closures in the Netherlands, as well as shops in Turnhout, Kortrijk and Roeselare.

De Slegte was taken over in 2012 by investment house ProCures and later made part of the Polare chain then operating in the Netherlands. Polare was declared bankrupt last month, with the eight shops in Flanders – in Aalst, Antwerp, Bruges, Brussels, Ghent, Hasselt, Leuven and Mechelen – excluded from the bankruptcy. Polare had been cut off by the main Dutch book distributor for payment arrears and could no longer function.

Now the great-grandson of De Slegte’s founder has re-acquired the eight stores in Belgium and intends to go forward maintaining the company’s original product base: second-hand books, textbooks and cut-price editions. Most books at De Slegte are in Dutch, but there is also a good selection of second-hand books in other languages.