Deputy mayor of Paris in charge of commerce, crafts, liberal professions, artistic professions and fashion, Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj underlines the resilience of Parisian businesses despite recent crises. With 28 businesses per 1,000 inhabitants, Paris remains a unique model. The town hall is actively involved by purchasing and pre-empting premises, supporting merchants digitally and energizing neighborhood life. A forward-looking strategy to preserve local employment and social ties as detailed by Nicolas Bonnet Ouladj.
Parisian Posters: Where are businesses in Paris today?
Nicolas Bonnet-Ouladj : Today, we are seeing great commercial vitality in Paris, despite the crises encountered in recent years: confinement, the Covid-19 crisis, inflation and the economic issues which weigh on the purchasing power of Parisians . Despite this, Paris remains a city with a high density of businesses, with 28 businesses per 1,000 inhabitants. It is one of the highest densities in France, even in the world.
Moreover, many foreign media are interested in our model, seeking to understand how Paris is resisting. Our businesses face challenges such as e-commerce, which weakens physical commerce, leads to an increase in parcel delivery and contributes to pollution and the relocation of jobs.
Faced with these challenges, the city of Paris supports and helps its businesses to preserve a local model and maintain physical stores. This is essential for Parisian town planning and to preserve this “quarter-hour city“, this somewhat village-like city, where every Parisian can find a grocery store, a bakery, a florist or even a café less than 15 minutes from home.
What concrete actions have been put in place by the town hall to support these traders?
Unlike other cities, Paris stands out for its strong intervention in real estate. The Paris town hall owns numerous commercial premises, which it buys or pre-empts to install traders there and support them in their installation. To date, more than 7,000 businesses located at the foot of social housing buildings, or 12% of Parisian businesses, belong to the city. At the same time, the Paris Commerces organization has already acquired or pre-empted more than 1,000 premises, making it possible to locate artisans and traders in difficulty, such as florists, booksellers or textile professionals.
For example, we recently inaugurated the Hawa Paris boutique, an integration company which relocates textile manufacturing to Paris while promoting local know-how. This type of initiative illustrates our desire to boost commercial diversity and fight against vacant premises and monoactivity, which harm both Parisians and the traders themselves. Thanks to our action, we can set up various businesses, such as butchers or florists, in areas where these activities are lacking.
In addition to this real estate management, we develop commercial animation actions. This includes all the prizes awarded by the City, which recognize our entrepreneurs, or even schemes such as the “Made in Paris” label. This year, we have labeled more than 540 objects, bringing the total number of articles recognized in seven years to 2,500. We also support digital visibility for merchants. Through Paris Commerces, entrepreneurs can test their activity in low-rent premises for several weeks in order to validate their economic model.
Finally, during this holiday season, we are funding Christmas lights to the tune of one million euros and supporting merchants in organizing Christmas markets. These initiatives, like that of Place de la Concorde which we recently inaugurated with the mayor of Paris, Anne Hidalgo or in other Parisian districts, reinforce the attractiveness and conviviality of our capital.
Today we are in the AK Fleuriste store, the 100th business supported by the Costo digital program. Can you explain this program to us?
We realized that one of the main commerce crises in the world is the e-commerce offensive. Today, large sites, particularly in China and the United States, deliver to cities and directly attack physical commerce. This e-commerce delivery raises several issues. First, it outsources employment, leading to the loss of physical jobs in Paris. It also generates a massive circulation of parcels, increasing CO₂ emissions with many objects circulating on a global scale, while involving players who do not contribute to taxes in France.
Our role is, on the one hand, to install traders in order to promote employment in Paris, like here with this young apprentice recruited by the trader. This installation made it possible to create an apprenticeship position, but it is also a relocation issue. Relocating is of course fighting against the proliferation of packages delivered to Paris and contributing to environmental issues with traceability. For example, the vast majority of these seasonal flowers come from France, or even Europe, such as the Netherlands, a major supplier of flowers, but they come from a short supply chain.
Faced with the e-commerce offensive, one of the major challenges is to support merchants with digital tools. This includes apps like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, creating short videos, posts, etc., to reach out to their customer base. The Costo program, for example, is a coaching program that supports traders for more than three months. Each merchant benefits from personalized support, based on their brand, their needs, their customers and their desire for development. The coach helps develop digital tools adapted to reach specific targets and build customer loyalty. Thanks to this, some stores manage to resist e-commerce, by creating a loyal local customer base.
Does this program also have other actions?
We also have, as part of the Costo program, a business networking component. This is a newsletter with useful information for traders, from the City of Paris or Paris Commerces, concerning for example the Christmas markets, the prices of “Made in Paris” or “Entrepreneurial Taste “. Today, more than 2,500 Parisian merchants, whether in city premises or in the private sector, benefit from these digital tools and this network.
I’m thinking, for example, of one of the objects that circulate the most today via Amazon, not to mention it: the book. In the 2000s, we saw many bookstores close, such as Gibert Joseph. Thanks to Paris Commerces, we were able to reinstall physical bookstores and help numerous booksellers through the Costo program, while networking businesses. This allows customers to know that if a book is not available in their bookstore, they can find it in another bookstore in Paris, with the possibility of pre-ordering it and having it delivered to their home. Digital technology is thus becoming a crucial support to help merchants deal with e-commerce and build customer loyalty.
How can merchants benefit from this program?
It’s very simple: all you have to do is go to the Paris Commerces website or to our premises located at Place de la République to create a file. Our teams are there to help merchants. Paris Commerces is a one-stop shop that we created with the mayor of Paris a year ago. And we are going to open, in January, a new website, much more flexible and accessible. I will inaugurate it in January; it will be the portal, the single entry point for commerce in Paris.
How do you see the future of retailers in Paris?
We hope radiant. For us, merchants play a key role in the social connection with each Parisian. They don’t just sell, they are much more than that. Shops are also places that make the city safer. We talk a lot about security, insecurity, but the more businesses we have, the more secure the city is, the more there is a feeling of security and social connection. They are major players in the city, and the more we have, the better. So, I do everything to help our traders in Paris.
A final message for traders?
I wish them happy holidays and great commercial success. We hope that they will continue to create jobs, train young people and prepare the future generation.
