2024-01-18 17:24:35
The pace of store closures is accelerating and increasing to the ready-to-wear brand Pimkie. Unsurprisingly, management announced this Thursday morning a new plan, during an extraordinary social and economic committee (CSE), in Villeneuve-d’Ascq (North), less than a year following signing a first PSE which already planned the closure, by 2027, of 63 stores.
From now on, 100 stores will close the curtain between summer 2022 and the end of 2024 – or almost one in 3, out of an initial total of around 300 stores in France. Everyone must have returned the keys by the end of the year. This was already done for 23 of them on December 31.
“The employees will not have time to turn around”
This restructuring will be accompanied by 496 job cuts within the brand which still had 1,375 employees at the end of December. In addition to the sellers – mainly saleswomen – of the stores doomed to disappear, 42 employees out of the 143 at the North head office will also lose their jobs. Some have already left the company: at the end of 2023, 82 economic layoffs had been notified.
“It was a cold shower, it was a tsunami that fell on us. We are very angry, breathes Marie-Annick Merceur, CFDT union representative and saleswoman in Brest (Finistère) for 37 years. The 36 new stores concerned must have closed next July, do you realize? It’s so short for the employees, they won’t have time to turn around…”
Emmanuelle Merzeaud, CGT delegate, 24 years of seniority, store manager in Bordeaux, learned that it was going to close, just like the three other remaining stores in this city. “No more Pimkie stores in Bordeaux, nor in Lille, nor in Toulouse either. But by leaving these large cities, how does our management plan to make money? », she asks.
In a press release, the management of Pimkie precisely justifies its decision by “the economic context, the drop in attendance at points of sale and inflation”, which have “considerably impacted sales and economic results”. This therefore makes the restructuring plan launched by the new managers of the brand a little more cumbersome – sold in early 2023 by the Mulliez family (Auchan) to a consortium of buyers (Lee Cooper France, Amoniss and Ibisler Textiles).
14 stores affiliated with the Miniso brand
Pimkie also announces that it wants to “diversify its activity by affiliating 14 other stores in its network to the Miniso brand”, a Chinese accessories chain which set foot in France in 2021, under the leadership of several investors including the former Canal + journalist Ariel Wizman, who became an entrepreneur.
The connection does not seem obvious, between the mid-range ready-to-wear collections, and Miniso’s very wide range of low-priced items – beauty products, soft toys, decoration, stationery. But it must make it possible, assures Pimkie, to “preserve 96 positions”.
“I don’t see how the employees concerned will stay once their positions are transferred. They will no longer even depend on the same collective agreement,” objects Marie-Annick Merceur. “It’s a real job, selling ready-to-wear clothes, there’s no question that we’re forcing our colleagues to sell Chinese stuffed animals, they must have the choice,” insists Emmanuelle Merzeaud.
Two new stores to test a new concept
Still in a press release, Élodie Chelle, deputy general manager of Pimkie, announces “a new Pimkie store concept”, scheduled to open “in the coming weeks. » The challenge: “reinvent the Pimkie experience and work on its desirability among our target of 18-25 year olds. » Two test stores would be affected in Nantes and Amiens.
Will this be enough to save the brand created in 1971, and shaken like many others by the crisis which has been affecting the clothing sector for months, shaken successively by the development of e-commerce, the health crisis and inflation? Some brands have not recovered (Camaïeu, Kookaï). “2024 will not necessarily be a year of recovery for mid-range ready-to-wear,” estimates Gildas Minvielle, economist at the French Fashion Institute. Even if l’inflation slows down, prices will continue to increase and new players, positioned on low prices, are finding their place in this crisis economy”, in reference to the development of the Chinese site Shein and the British site Primark.
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