Wednesday is the last day of the summer sales, the last period of discount six weeks before a change to four weeks next winter. For traders, the record is mixed, while expectations were very high after the crisis of "yellow vests".

ON DECRYPT

In the windows of downtown Bordeaux, the announcement of sales with discounts of up to 70% continues to attract the attention of tourists wandering an ice or guide in hand. But in the Gironde city, as elsewhere, have these enticing promotions succeeded in making the merchants forget several gloomy months?

No turnover, but cash?

There are some reasons for satisfaction at the beginning of August. "The balance sheet is quite favorable with an attendance up 1.5% and an average basket also up 6%," says Europe 1 Eric Mertz, president of the National Federation of clothing. "It's about the apparel sector, so it's women's ready-to-wear, men's, children's fashion, but also textiles." Balances remain an important meeting, "he confirms.

"We would have liked to have a little more people," concedes Jeremy, who runs a clothing store in Bordeaux. "Overall, we are still happy: it does not really make the figure, but especially to recover the cash to make room for the new collection."

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The shopkeeper in Bordeaux nevertheless believes that these six weeks of discounts have not fully catch up "the snags of six months of events". And the cause is all right: these are the "yellow vests", who demonstrated every Saturday in the city center. The stakes were high: "There was an effect social movements and yellow vests that impacted the traffic in the stores", analyzes Cyril Besse, expert of consumption at Univers Retail. "We started the balances with a relatively large turnover deficit and in fact, we did not make any margin when it was necessary to do it", rewinds Eric Mertz.

" You always have outdoor shopping malls in the city that are still with much higher figures than last year "

In Bordeaux, as in many other cities, the repeated events have caused a large part of the customers of shops in the city center to flee and the balances were not enough to make them return massively. "Bringing the world back to Bordeaux is not easy, you always have shopping malls outside the city that still have much higher figures than last year," regrets Christian Baulme, president of the association The Neighborhood Round. "It takes time to get people back to their old ways."

Hot weather and off-balance discounts

But if the balances have not allowed to erase a start of the year very mixed, even bad in places, it is not only due to the "yellow vests". "There has been a heat wave effect for traders," says Cyril Besse. "There are also some substantive topics, including the fact that there are more and more non-sales promotions in late April and early May, which dilute the impact of sales to consumers." "This is no longer the social rite that we know, because customers do not wait for that period to do good business," echoes Eric Mertz.

The duration of the balances, which last held for six weeks before moving to four during the next winter sales, is in question. "In general, we know that it is on the first two, three weeks that sales are attractive to consumers.Then, it disintegrates very quickly over the rest of the period," says Cyril Besse.

Now, traders look to the future and hope to refuel for the important deadline of the return. In Bordeaux, entertainment is already planned in the streets and shops of the city center. The ice will not be there anymore. And the purchasing power?