Lyon (AFP)

"We would give a VIP welcome, with a coffee": Philippe Bettant clings to the fragile hope of soon being able to reopen his six ready-to-wear shops by appointment, a rare possible alternative for traders suffocated by the reconfinement and not equipped for the Internet.

While Prime Minister Jean Castex is due to take stock Thursday on a possible easing of confinement, Mr. Bettant proposes that the scheduled shopping at a local merchant becomes a "tenth reason for travel" on the certificates.

What "to make a minimum of turnover", notes the manager of Lyon.

Customers would be received one by one in compliance with barrier gestures and health protocol.

Faced with a "click & collect" difficult to set up in a clothing sector where "the customer likes to try", we must "let us do our real job of consulting rather than wanting to convert ourselves into an IT specialist", believes the entrepreneur.

The forced digitization of small businesses also comes up against very real barriers.

The Lyon Chamber of Commerce and Industry - which is also pushing for opening by appointment - estimates that 65% of VSEs have trouble with digital vocabulary and that 30% of them still have no website.

The same goes for Marie Vidal, also the manager of a ready-to-wear boutique in the city center of Lyon.

"I have a site; we are active on social networks, but we lack the human being. We are neither Nike nor Zara; customers come to look for something else in our stores."

Especially since the difficulties accumulate for the shopkeeper who could not recruit after the retirement of her only employee, after the first confinement.

To warn about her situation, and on the initiative of an association of independents, Ms. Vidal has just posted a red sign "For sale" in her window, with a phone number that refers to the Elysée switchboard .

"I don't know how I'm going to pay for the merchandise for the summer collection which will arrive in January," she adds worriedly.

For Clément Chevalier, director of "My Presqu'île", an association which brings together 700 traders from the capital of Gaul, these new closures to deal with the pandemic are "collective suicide".

"We destroy the entire economy at the risk of breaking society," he warns.

- Poker -

He too is hopeful that the government will regularize shopping by appointment, especially since "some brands are already doing it".

"It's an open secret," he says.

"If we go into this, it is communication costs, salary costs, without guarantee of sale at the end of the day": manager of a decoration store not far from Place Bellecour, Tiffany Fayolle wonders, she, on the benefits to be drawn from such a trickle reopening.

"It's like playing poker with cash. I would prefer that we be given a real date, even distant but sure, to reopen. It would allow us to anticipate and be ready on D-Day."

Co-manager of a disguise shop, Grégory Quest experienced the re-containment two days before Halloween "like a nuclear catastrophe".

"I ended up with 150,000 euros unsold on my hands".

However, he is also skeptical about sales by appointment in his 300 square meter store.

"It's kind of like asking a hypermarket to only allow customers 50 by 50."

Mr. Quest is ready to remain the curtain down until December if necessary but "provided that donors, insurers and suppliers take their share."

© 2020 AFP