Far are the images of people rushing into the stores at the opening to grab the best tips. The summer sales, which begin this Wednesday and end on August 11, take place in a very specific context this year: reluctance of consumers, sanitary measures still in force in stores, textile brands in turmoil and fairly depressed professionals .
"This is the last chance for traders to sell their stocks after a season that has been particularly difficult," recently told AFP Yohann Petiot, the director general of the Trade Alliance, which brings together the Union of large downtown business, the Federation of clothing brands and that of shoe brands. After more than two months of store closings due to the containment decided to stem the Covid-19 pandemic, stocks are indeed at a “particularly high level”, he specifies.
It is therefore high time to move on, to forget this unprecedented spring-summer season, both in terms of loss of turnover, gaping holes in the treasuries of shops, and anxiety about the future. .
Sales volume down 45% in one year
According to an INSEE report published on Friday, the sales volume fell by 45% in the non-food retail trade between April 2019 and April 2020, a huge shortfall that traders have been trying, since deconfinement, to catch up, by focusing in particular on private sales and other promotions. But low prices aren't everything, even if sales are the only time of year when selling at a loss is allowed.
Attracting customers in this period of the end of the health crisis is not easy: the French have got into the habit of spending only for their basic needs and have preferred to save (up to 60 billion euros according to the government).
The reinforced health protocol
“In volume, in 2020, household consumption of goods fell by 17% in March and 34% in April compared to the same months of the previous year, before recovering in May where it was no more than 8% lower than a year earlier, "said INSEE in its report.
And this deconsumption, or this "frugal and responsible" consumption as the analysis for AFP Yves Marin, expert in the distribution sector within the Bartle cabinet, risks lasting. Thus, according to a study by the consultancy firm BCG, carried out with just over 9,000 consumers in China, the United States and France, “56% of French people wait for strong signals of recovery before going back to store ”, when the Chinese are 49% affirming it and the Americans 59%.
It is not the health measures put in place at points of sale - wearing a compulsory mask, systematic hydroalcoholic gel, sometimes inaccessible changing rooms - that will encourage shopping. The Trade Alliance had asked the authorities at the end of June to lighten this health protocol in order to "encourage and facilitate the return to the store", as is the case in businesses, explains AFP Yohann Petiot, but in vain. On the contrary, the protocol has been further strengthened: on Wednesday, President Emmanuel Macron announced that the mask would become mandatory in enclosed spaces from August 1. "For the actors of our sector, the gauge of a person for 4 m2 of residual surface and the placement in isolation of the products during 24 hours make the purchase journey of the customers and the organization in store more difficult", pleads Mr. Petiot.
Economy
Why did the French lose their taste for sales?
- Economy
- epidemic
- Covid 19
- Coronavirus
- Sales
- Society