Rennes (AFP)

The French distributor of wedding dresses Pronuptia, which employs 234 people confirmed Thursday the definitive closure of the company, we learned from the brand and the commercial court of Laval.

In a judgment rendered Tuesday the court pronounced "the rejection of the offers of recovery", confirmed the commercial court to AFP Thursday. Asked about the definitive closure of Pronuptia, a source at the company's headquarters in Louverné (Mayenne), contacted by telephone by AFP, replied: "yes, I can confirm it" with no further details or comments.

Pronuptia was placed in compulsory liquidation by the Laval Commercial Court in September 2019.

The president of the Pronuptia group, Philippe Macé, then explained that in 2019, the distributor had "made no results" and could not have honored the payment of the debt. "The penalty is the liquidation," said Macé, who bought the company in 2008.

The group was in activity until December 4 and a legal administrator had been appointed to find buyers.

Pronuptia, which has 41 shops and claims to be the market leader, was placed in recovery in 2012 and then a continuation plan adopted in 2013. The payment of its debt had been spread over 10 years. In September, he still had 9 million euros to reimburse.

A number of marriages which "has never been so low" and three months (January, February, March) marked by the movement of yellow vests had also affected the activity of the group, to which were added the rate of the dollar and the online sales competition.

The first Pronuptia store opened in 1958 in Paris.

In a press release to AFP, the president of the house of haute couture wedding dress Cymbeline expressed his "sadness".

"Pronuptia was, is, and will remain an iconic name in the world of the bride and for the French," reacted Jean-Philippe Lautraite, whose brand was still alone "with Pronuptia not to go to China and to remain French ".

"The wedding dress market is terrible," said the boss of Cymbeline. "We have little control over the final number of marriages that will be celebrated, we are undergoing demographic curves and the aging of populations in Europe" and "90% of wedding dresses come from China," he added.

In 2019, 227,000 marriages were celebrated (221,000 heterosexual marriages and 6,000 homosexual marriages), compared to 234,000 in 2018 (including 228,000 marriages of people of different sexes).

© 2020 AFP