Paris (AFP)

Vivarte, once the flagship of the French textile industry, put in difficulty by international competition and successive takeovers, should be liquidated by the end of the year, under the bitter gaze of former employees who had alerted many times, until to Emmanuel Macron before he was elected president.

April 2017, the then Minister of the Economy was still a candidate when he visited representatives of Vivarte employees.

"There is no magician", then warned Emmanuel Macron.

In front of the cameras of the political show of France 2, he asked the representatives to "defend your employees, not to let go and the State will take its responsibilities".

"A large PSE (job protection plan) had been validated between the two rounds of the presidential election," recalls Gérald Gautier, then Force Ouvrière union representative.

Emmanuel Macron "said that we would not let it happen, and nothing happened", he regrets Tuesday, the day after the announcement of the sale by the end of the year of the last two brands of Vivarte, Caroll and Minelli.

- "European leader" -

Naf Naf, Chevignon, Beryl, Pataugas, Kookaï or Creeks, not to mention the juggernaut La Halle ... All have for a time been part of the former André group, created at the end of the 19th century and renamed Vivarte in 2001.

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In fact, a PSE is in progress for the last 34 employees of Vivarte Services, which includes support functions.

And, once Caroll and Minelli are sold, respectively to the French groups Beaumanoir and San Marina, a former brand of the group, the group will be definitively liquidated.

How did we get here ?

In the middle of the 2000s, "Vivarte was the European leader in personal equipment, counted around twenty fine brands, some Franco-French, and 22,000 employees", recalls Jean-Louis Alfred, former CFDT representative at group committee and now "economic licensee of Vivarte".

But the group has suffered from successive buyouts by funds, some at the cost of significant debt.

The employee representative organizations then mobilize against these LBOs, "leverage buy-outs" or redemptions with leverage, without being able to prevent them.

The weight of the debt will force the brand to gradually divest its brands, and prevent it from facing competition from online clothing sales, whose operating costs are generally much lower.

In 2014, the creditor funds Oaktree, Alcentra, GoldenTree and Babson became the reference shareholders of Vivarte.

- "Total indifference to politicians" -

“Already at the time, we were saying that we would be moving towards the dismantling of the group,” regrets Jean-Louis Alfred.

The unions will indeed alert on multiple occasions, "in the total indifference of politicians", he also accuses.

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"Vivarte is 5,000 stores throughout France, it's not a single big site like Goodyear's where you can go have your picture taken ..."

The climax of the dismantling will come in the midst of the Covid-19 epidemic, in the summer of 2020, with the judicial reorganization of La Halle.

Of the 830 stores (and 5,500 jobs) that the clothing and footwear brand still had, 508 had been taken over, including 366 by Beaumanoir.

"In La Halle above all, there was a real corporate culture", regrets Gérald Gautier, who joined "20 years ago".

"People took pleasure in working together and made a real family. Everything was destroyed as we went."

In the daily Les Echos Tuesday, the president of Vivarte, Patrick Puy, a specialist in the restructuring of companies who came to the helm in 2016, considered that the dismantling of the group "was inevitable".

"All this hurts the heart", concludes Jean-Louis Alfred, who calls on politicians: "The last thing we can do for Vivarte, for all these employees who have felt themselves to be sub-citizens, it would be to legislate against this kind of assembly, and against this kind of funds, which only arrive to dismantle a group ".

© 2021 AFP