The winter sales start this Wednesday, January 20, 2021. -

SYSPEO / SIPA

Buyers did not rush on Wednesday for the first day of winter sales, in the midst of the coronavirus epidemic and with a curfew at 6 p.m.

If the traders do not count on a miracle, they hope to end this winter season smoothly, shaken by the health crisis.

In Bordeaux in the middle of the morning, in the rue Saint-Catherine, the longest pedestrian shopping street in Europe, it was not the euphoria of the great days.

“Usually, the first day of sales, it's crowded here!

In the morning, we make huge numbers, but there aren't even half the people we usually see ”, regrets Colas Michard, general manager of the Michard Ardillier shoe store, a family business that is well established. street since 1878.

The fear of confinement

In a Spanish ready-to-wear brand, a saleswoman acknowledges that attendance is “not there”: “Usually, on the first day of sales (…) there are long queues at the cash desks.

There, hardly anyone.

It must be said that the changing rooms are closed and that the curfew at 6:00 p.m. does not help!

"

In a context where the circulation of the virus remains important in France, the closing of the doors imposed everywhere at 6 pm since Saturday is however “a lesser evil”, as indicated by Francis Palombi: for the president of the Confederation of the traders of France (representing the self-employed), the sales can even “be more of a rebound”.

"The biggest fear was to be confined" while the winter sales represent a "crucial period", added Tuesday Yohann Petiot, director general of the Alliance du commerce.

This promotional period notably ensured 13.5% of the 2019 sales of clothing brands.

Medef calls for stores to open on Sundays

"We are close to a third confinement, people may not want to go out to shop and then, at the budgetary level, it may be stuck," suggests Marie Sigogne, manager of a Geox shoe store in Bordeaux.

About 73% of French people plan to take advantage of the winter sales, against 80% last year, according to a Spartoo / Ifop survey carried out at the beginning of the month on a sample of 1,002 people representative of the French population.

Positive point: they plan to spend an average of 197 euros, almost as much as last year.

"The sales are still a very important day for traders who have suffered enormously for more than three years, between various demonstrations and confinement," said the president of Medef Geoffroy Roux de Bézieux during a visit to the Beaugrenelle shopping center in Paris.

"We need to help our traders not only by giving them the opportunity to open on Sundays (...) but also that we help them more generally, they are sometimes in an unequal struggle with digital giants", a- he added.

City centers abandoned due to the epidemic

The commercial world was shaken by the health crisis last year.

Clothing brands have suffered particularly: they lost nearly a quarter of their turnover (22.6%), according to a study by Retail Int.

and the Trade Alliance.

Faced with the health crisis and the restrictions to curb the epidemic, the habits of the French have also changed.

They favored peripheral commercial zones, abandoning the shops in town centers.

A change that particularly penalized Paris.

Despite this sluggish start, traders are hoping to regain some air with the winter sales, which start later this year and end on February 20.

The government has postponed their date to allow businesses to sell a few more weeks without promotion, in order to replenish the treasuries weighed down by the reconfinement.

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