While they demanded a reopening on May 10, so-called "non-essential" businesses will finally have to wait until May 19.
An additional delay which could, according to Éric Mertz, president of Allure, the union of small and medium-sized enterprises in clothing, force small clothing stores to sell at a loss.
The deconfinement schedule is now known.
For businesses currently closed, it will be May 19, in three weeks, at the same time as the terraces of bars and restaurants.
While restaurant owners rejoice, shopkeepers are grimacing.
They had asked, on April 22, in a forum addressed to Emmanuel Macron, a reopening on May 10 to take advantage of the Ascension weekend.
They were not heard.
"It's a real disaster. For the second year in a row, we will end up with a blank season on the spring-summer part", laments at the microphone of Europe 1 Eric Mertz, president of Allure, the union of VSEs - Clothing SME.
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For him, these nine days of difference will undermine the economic model of small clothing stores.
"A reopening on May 19 will definitively condemn the margin that we could have made on the spring-summer collections. Unlike the big brands which can play on their margin and a choice renewed every month, the independent stores will reopen with collections of spring that will not have been sold and they will be forced to make promotions. So we risk selling at a loss from May 19, "explains Eric Mertz.
Advanced balances?
To arrange this recovery, the president of the Allure union fears that the reopening should be made an exceptional period.
"It will probably very quickly pave the way for the sale at a loss, in my opinion by decree, or the advancement of the date of the sales from June 23 to May 19. It will not become complicated, it already was, but insoluble ", laments Eric Mertz.
Especially since the aid granted by the government will decrease as businesses reopen.
"Our only hope is the government's stimulus plan, it will have to be up to the task."
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"I don't know how we're going to do it if we don't earn money when we reopen. We only have two collections a year, bought months in advance. These are investments that we couldn't Make a profit by closing every third day in the past year. There, over the first three months of the year, the loss of turnover fluctuates between 20 and 30% ", specifies Eric Mertz. In addition, the reopening remains fragile since it is linked to the evolution of the health situation. In the departments where the number of contaminations is too high, businesses could once again have to lower the curtain temporarily.