Relay started under the name Relais H', when in 1852 Louis Hachette acquired the "trainstations' libraries". The sales of newspapers quickly overperformed the sales of books. To keep books' sales up, Relais H innovated by creating book series and asking specific authors to write those series.[4]
In January 2000, the stores Relais H became Relay. At that time, Relay owned 1,000 stores in 10 countries in Europe and North America.[5]
In October 2012, Lagardère Travel Retail created a joint-venture with Indian Travel Food Services to develop Relay in India.[6]
In February 2016, Lagardère sold its Travel Retail operations in Belgium to the Bpost group for $491 million.[7]
