It is one of the most prestigious addresses of the cultural products brand. Opened in 1997, the Fnac des Champs-Élysées, located at number 74 of the famous Parisian avenue, “will close on the evening of Sunday January 12, 2025”, indicated the Fnac Darty group to West France, specifying that“a clearance sale will be launched on Friday January 3” in order to liquidate stocks. The group adds that “the teams will be reassigned to other stores”. “A reclassification proposal was proposed to 100% of our employees in Paris (the vast majority), in Île-de-France and in the provinces, according to their choices and availability,” adds a Fnac Darty spokesperson.
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The Champs-Élysées store had around a hundred employees. Some mobility having already taken place, there remain today 89 employees. Not counting the stations, Fnac has five stores in the capital: Ternes, Saint-Lazare, Forum des Halles, Montparnasse, Beaugrenelle.
Who instead?
Who will replace Fnac? No one wants to respond at the moment, but the successor has already been found. According to our information, it should be a large popular brand, not luxury therefore, and the work could begin very quickly after the closure of the cultural store. The neighbors are currently Zara, Tissot and Sephora.
This definitive closure was revealed in March by the magazine Challenges. It was announced for the end of the year; we now know its precise date and it will be for 2025. “It’s never good news, especially an iconic store like this,” the group then responded to the economic media. “The plan to close the store is the only economically reasonable and socially responsible decision,” had completed Fnac Darty in a press release, adding that the store is “heavily in deficit for many years”.
“Multiple difficulties”
The explanations given by the group at the time remain valid, we are told. He insisted on the “multiple difficulties”, in particular the increase “generalized fixed charges”, starting with the rent, and a drop in sales “due to a decreasing use of the area by the brand’s natural clientele”. The group estimated the prospects “unfavorable”, with “the increasingly marked orientation of the avenue towards luxury retail and international customers”.
Marc-Antoine Jamet, president of the Champs-Élysées Committee which brings together 180 members, real estate companies and brands and which runs the avenue, responds to West France that this departure is, according to him, not linked to « l’orientation » of the artery. He defends: “All attendance figures are on the rise, including among young people or emerging markets, who do not all go to luxury boutiques. This departure is not a Champs-Elysées or real estate subject, but rather a subject on the positioning of Fnac. It's a question of supply and perhaps the result of a strategic error in not having kept both levels available. »
25,000 employees in the group
Requested by West France, several representatives of the company's unions did not respond this Friday at 2:45 p.m. For its part, the CFTC, the first union of the Fnac group and the Fnac Darty group, indicated “do not wish to comment on this subject at the moment”. In March, he worried about possible other closures in the capital. No others are planned, replies the group.
Fnac Darty employs 25,000 people in just over a thousand stores, located in a dozen countries. At the end of 2023, the Fnac network included precisely 231 stores in France (91 integrated Fnac and 140 franchised Fnac).
