Definitive closure: Printemps de Strasbourg carried away by its luxury strategy

By werdt15/02/2022647 Views

On the windows of the store, imposing red posters welcome the customer: "Exceptional liquidation". The Printemps de Strasbourg is definitely closing its doors in four months, so the stocks have to be emptied, a heartbreak for the employees, according to whom the brand's shift towards luxury has been a fiasco.

A little everywhere in the aisles, signs "-70%" flowered a few days ago. "Items not taken back or exchanged", warns the sign. The operation should continue until October 30, but from the first hours the store was taken by storm. A long entrance line formed on the sidewalk on the first day.

On the ground floor, several jewelry displays are now completely empty, as are shelves of accessories, where scarves and hats were still piled up last week. On the first floor, devoted to women's fashion, the corridors seem surprisingly wide, now that several brands have dismantled their stands. The sound of coat hangers being piled up in boxes echoes in the ears of customers, looking for bargains.

"Everything is empty, it's very sad", agrees Evelyne, 67, crossed in the lingerie department. "It's a bit of an end-of-reign atmosphere," says this former laboratory technician, who does not wish to reveal her name. "But anyway, I hadn't come since the big transformation, it was no longer in my prices".

Rare marks and baroque facade

The "great transformation" refers to the renovation operation, carried out between 2011 and 2013, for more than 15 million euros. When it reopened, the Printemps group, which had just been taken over by Qataris, offered a more upscale positioning and prided itself on welcoming "rare brands", in a building with a new baroque facade in glass and aluminum.

"At the time, we were told: + We are now a luxury store, Printemps no longer aligns itself with the competition +", recalls Yolande Fischbach, 62, saleswoman since 1976, and CGT delegate. "We were told that it was better to sell a bag at 3,000 euros than ten bags at 300 euros, because the margin was higher. But with that, we lost our customers".

Definitive closure: Printemps de Strasbourg carried away by its luxury strategy

This change in strategy had been accompanied, for the staff, by a set of recommendations to better welcome a wealthy clientele. "We were trained, we were no longer sales assistants but hostesses", explains Martine Ebersold, 58, of whom 38 spent in the store. "We no longer had to say basement but + low ground floor +, we no longer had to say shoe but shoe, and we could no longer point to a ray of the finger, we had to + accompany the customer with the hand +", explains t - she linking the gesture to the word.

But making this 7,500 square meter store a temple of luxury was a daring bet to say the least: in Strasbourg, the establishment is located on the same sidewalk as the H&M and Primark brands, and their T-shirts at 4.90 euros . It is located in front of a fast food restaurant, and overlooks a square where five tram lines intersect: not really a setting of calm and voluptuousness, rather one of constant buzz.

Collapse of turnover

In fact, the bet turned out to be a loser, sales quickly melted away. According to a source close to management, turnover fell from 27 million euros in 2013 to 16 million in 2019 (-40%). At the same time, the workforce has been halved.

Asked, the management did not wish to speak.

For the staff, the period is particularly "painful", concedes Christine Wagner, saleswoman in watchmaking. The closure of the establishment, and of three other stores of the sign (Metz, Le Havre, Paris place d'Italie) had been announced last November, "but seeing the shelves emptying out is hard to take ".

Every employee now thinks of a way to bounce back. If the CGT, the majority union, has negotiated substantial credits for the training of employees, the group has refused early retirement schemes, thus sending seniors back to the labor market.

With 35 years of experience, Christine Wagner is preparing to develop her own business as a self-entrepreneur. "I need to turn the page," she concludes.