Camaïeu, Kookaï, Gap, Pimkie, Jennyfer… The judicial liquidations of emblematic brands have punctuated the economic news of recent months. This Thursday, December 28, the ax fell on the furniture and decoration brand Habitat.
Less than ten days after being placed in receivership, the company was placed in compulsory liquidation, without continued activity, by the Bobigny commercial court. A cataclysm for this brand, founded in 1964 by the British designer Terence Conran (died in 2020), which employs nearly 400 employees in France and whose turnover amounted, in 2022, to some 65 million euros .
The decision, however, is not surprising. For several years, the company has been experiencing financial difficulties. In 2018, Norwegian stores went bankrupt. A few months later, it was the German stores that closed their doors.
When it was put up for sale in 2019 by its owner at the time, the distributor Cafom, Habitat France was already in a net loss. Which does not prevent it from finding a buyer in the person of entrepreneur-investor Thierry Le Guénic. The same year, the businessman bought Burton of London… which was also placed in receivership this summer by the Paris court.
Burton of London, still looking for a buyer
The year 2023 will have been particularly hard for ready-to-wear brands. After a legal safeguard procedure initiated in October 2022, Burton of London was forced to close 26 points of sale last February, including those in Aix-en-Provence, Clermont-Ferrand, la Roche-sur-Yon, from Montauban or Paris Montparnasse.
To date, no “global” recovery offer has been presented to the judges in charge of the case. “Management is therefore working on an alternative continuation plan” and part of the debt could be abandoned, a source close to the matter told AFP.
Jennyfer, soon a continuation plan?
This situation echoes that of another well-known ready-to-wear brand: Don’t Call Me Jennyfer. The management of the brand, founded in 1984 and in receivership since June, announced this fall that it would present a continuation plan in the coming months.
The objective? “Preserve as many jobs and stores as possible, […] broaden the customer target”, and rethink the supply chain by managing stocks “a little more just in time”, a spokesperson for the group then detailed. This should not, however, prevent the elimination of 60 positions at headquarters and 15 in warehouses. No store closures were planned at this stage.
Gap bought by Spodis
Like many other French brands, Gap has borne the brunt of the explosive cocktail that has been suffocating the clothing sector for four years: Covid-19 pandemic, inflation, rising costs of energy, raw materials, rents and salaries or even competition from second-hand goods and fast fashion.
The Gap France brand, owned by a subsidiary of the Ohayon group, also in the midst of a collapse, was placed in receivership at the beginning of March. Then a large part of its activities was taken over in May, for 300,000 euros, by the Lille company Spodis, belonging to JD Sports. This buyout saved 214 jobs, or two thirds of the workforce. JD Sports also reached an agreement in September to buy French company Courir for around €520 million.
Towards the end of the Casino series?
The ready-to-wear sector is not the only one affected by the economic situation of recent years. The Casino group is also going through a very turbulent period. The saga has been going on since the summer, when the brand’s management signed an agreement providing for the restructuring of its debt. After several twists and turns, Auchan and Intermarché announced that they had reached an agreement, Monday, December 18, to buy “almost all” of the Casino group’s hypermarkets and supermarkets.
According to the group, this represents “313 stores” for which “all employees of the transferred stores would be taken over” by the Mousquetaires/Intermarché and Auchan group. The operation, “subordinated” to the ongoing financial restructuring of Casino, “could take place before the end of the first quarter of 2024”, he specifies.