Fonior

Fonior is a Belgian company from Brussels, founded by Eugene Willy Pelgrims de Bigard in 1929, one year after he opened his gramophone shop. Fonior imported records since 1932 and obtained an exclusive contract for importing Decca records in Belgium in 1934. In 1973, E.W. Pelgrims started the "International Pelgrims Group" (IPG), a holding for which Fonior formed the core. Fonior was the Belgian affiliate of Decca. By means of the Belgian holding "Cidomega" it also controlled the Dutch label Dureco at that time. By 1980 the company went bankrupt due to various problems. Some parts of the repertoire were first sold to Music for Pleasure Belgium, an EMI company. Marcel Heymans bought it in 1982 and started his own record company: Tauro. Tauro has since been sold in 1992 to BMG. Other parts of the repertoire were sold to Sonodisc in October 1981. The Fonior SA-Decca Studio in Brussels (Jetsesteenweg 218) was taken over by Salvatore Adamo in 1981. Since 1986 until the end of 1997 the studio was owned by Erwin Vervaecke. Now the studio still continues as Jet Studio claiming to be the oldest recording studio in Belgium.