Payot, which has 13 bookstores in French-speaking Switzerland and Bern, will close two Nature & Découvertes stores at the end of January 2025, those in Geneva Balexert and Fribourg, Maud Poncé-Hubier and Bénédicte Kuchcinski explain in an interview with the newspaper Le Temps. duo who succeeded Pascal Vandenberghe at the head of the brand. They explain that the results are insufficient, in a complicated context for the retail trade.
There will only be two sites left, in Lausanne and Geneva Rive Gauche: around ten employees should be affected by these closures. At the start of the year, three other Nature & Découvertes stores, in Sion, Vevey and Neuchâtel, closed their doors. Around fifteen positions had been eliminated, but some employees were able to continue their careers within Payot SA.
Contacted, Payot indicates that three employees will be made redundant on the Friborg site. The surface area of approximately 150m2 will be closed. The group does not plan to expand the bookstore space.
In 2009, the decision to establish the franchise in French-speaking Switzerland was considered a good deal and an intelligent diversification away from the sale of books alone.
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