The management of the company, which employs 218 employees, made this announcement on Thursday.
Flink is finished, the express home shopping platform Flink, which employs 218 people in France, “will be liquidated» Friday, its management announced Thursday, which declared a cessation of payments before the Paris commercial court. The company, one of the last to operate in France in this sector, suffered from the inflationary context, “still strong regulatory pressure” and a “disinterest of investors» for the sector, declared President and CEO Guillaume Luscan. Placed in receivership last June, Flink France was taken over in September by Guillaume Luscan, then its general director, the German parent company and the Algerian start-up Yassir. The new entity was called New Flink France.
This takeover then made it possible to maintain 56% of the workforce, or more than 200 employees. The Yassir start-up, “specialized in on-demand and payment services, one of the most valued in the Europe, Middle East and Africa region», according to Guillaume Luscan, had injected five million euros into the company. But inflation weighed on product purchasing conditions and regulatory pressure, “who remains strong”, would imply investments on the part of New Flink France “significant» to transform a number of its sites, explained its CEO.
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Regulation that killed the market
Finally, the “financial context is very difficult“, Investors “losing interest in the sector» after the recent disappointments of “quick commerce“, or express home delivery of groceries, he concluded. Indeed, in March 2023, very restrictive regulations brought a blow to the players in the “quick commerce“. The government had decreed that “dark stores» these premises where the products to be delivered are stored were warehouses and not businesses, opening the way to regulation by town halls of this activity, and even to the closure of certain sites. The Turkish company Getir, which operated the Getir, Frichti and Gorillas brands, then announced its withdrawal from the French market.
Getir and Gorillas had been liquidated, leaving 1,300 employees in the lurch, but Frichti had been taken over by a competitor, La Belle Vie. Flink, created in 2020 in Germany by logistics and distribution experts, established itself in France in 2021. Its turnover in France amounted to 37.5 million euros.
