Alinéa, Conforama: the coronavirus causes the first furniture bankruptcies

The Covid-19 causes the first bankruptcies in the furniture sector. The distributor Alinéa files for bankruptcy, and Conforama threatens to do the same, if it does not urgently obtain State aid. 

The boss of Alinéa says it very clearly. And many traders will surely recognize themselves. There were the yellow vests that weighed down on the weekends. Then, the strike against the pension reform, which sealed the Christmas season. And now the coronavirus that completes us. The result is bankruptcy. 

Conforama threatens to follow if it does not obtain a loan. But, apparently, the banks are ticking. It must be said that the difficulties of Conforama are not new. As we have already said, this coronavirus accelerates trends that were already at work, namely that the furniture sector is a sector in crisis. 

It's curious because the trend is cocooning. And confinement reinforced this desire to take care of its interior. 

But today, we buy furniture on the Internet. And on the Internet, we are breaking prices. It is therefore a formidable competition for traditional signs. E-commerce already represented 15% of sales before the crisis. One might think that this figure has soared with the two months of confinement. 

So now what to do with this surge of e-commerce? Are we condemned to close shop? Exactly not. The solution is to offer (sell) furniture that you cannot find on Amazon, to have an exclusive offer. It's the Ikea model. When you go to Ikea, it's to buy an Ikea bed, a very special product that you won't find elsewhere. And there it works. 

This is also a problem, which all distributors face. To survive in this hypercompetitive world, you must have a differentiating, exclusive offer. It is for this reason that the large distribution puts the package on the private labels. Exclusive products that attract and retain customers.