Ready-to-wear chain Esprit placed in receivership in France – Libération

After Pimkie, Go Sport, Camaïeu – finally taken over – yes San Marina, yet another ready-to-wear brand is mired in crisis. Esprit, whose headquarters are in Ratingen in Germany, has been placed in receivership in France. The court decision was taken on September 9, and consulted by AFP on September 12. “The activity can no longer be continued, estimates the commercial court of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine)There is no possibility of presenting a recovery plan to clear the liabilities.”

The company Esprit de Corp France, based in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), was placed in receivership on July 18. “As of the closing date of the last financial year”the company employed 145 employees in France and its annual turnover amounted to nearly 32 million euros. According to its website, consulted in July, the brand was present in more than a hundred points of sale in France.

The difficulties of the group, present in more than 40 countries with 586 stores, go beyond France. It had already announced in May that it was filing for bankruptcy for its activities in Europe. The subsidiary Esprit Europe and six other German companies in the group were concerned. Its managers were then counting on a restructuring to overcome the difficulties, particularly linked to the increase in its costs and the after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. The subsidiaries in Switzerland and Belgium had filed for bankruptcy a little earlier, in March and April.

These proceedings sound like the death knell for this clothing brand founded in 1968 in San Francisco by an American hippie couple – also at the origin of the brand The North Face. Douglas and Susie Tompkins sold their first items by crisscrossing California in a Volkswagen minibus. But the founders have not been at the helm for a long time. The group has been listed on the stock exchange since 1993.