REPORTAGE
No discount on wearing the mask in stores. The summer sales start on Wednesday, everywhere in France, but will not exempt consumers from respecting the barrier measures intended to avoid a second wave of coronavirus epidemic. While store stocks are sometimes large, after two months of closure at the height of the health crisis, will customers be there? The traders interviewed by Europe 1 do not hide their concern.
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"The two months we missed, we won't get them back"
On the outskirts of Toulouse, Dominique labels polo shirts and shirts from major brands. "After the deconfinement, we knew that the season was going to be white," she sighs. "The two months we missed, we don't get them back." And things could, she said, worsen due to the economic situation and the job cuts announced at Airbus, a breeding ground for local employment. "People are afraid of losing their jobs" and risk giving up on shopping, fears the shopkeeper.
In the city center, unsold goods from March, April and May accumulate at another merchant. "Pieces with sleeves that will have to be spent in the middle of summer ... We are in a complex equation". Result: significant discounts are planned from the first week of sales, with 40 to 60% reduction even for major brands, and much more for the giants of ready-to-wear.
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Sales too late?
In Paris, it is the heavy health protocols that worry. On the windows, red banners announce the opening of the sale, but next to other smaller posters recall the list of rules to be observed. "Even if it is the sales and we hope to bring in money, we will have to respect the barrier gestures, the mask, the gel ..." lists the saleswoman of a children's store.
Even if some consumers interviewed by Europe 1, now familiar with barrier gestures, especially in the metro, say they are ready to go for a walk in the store, the store managers hammer it out: these sales arrive for them too late, when everyone everyone has already gone on vacation.