Galeries Lafayette in Marseille is almost over. The group that owns the department stores announced on Tuesday January 21 to staff representative bodies that it intended to close the two stores it owns in the Marseille city by the end of the year.
Very cases “specific”assures the management of the group, which in no way reveal the difficulties across the entire network of 19 department stores which the Galeries Lafayette group still owns. On the contrary, “network turnover increased by 4% in 2024, after an increase of 4% [en 2023] »specifies management, generally not very talkative about its economic data.
In the Bourse shopping center in Marseille, Galeries Lafayette inherited the store when it bought Nouvelles Galeries in 1991, but since then, “the neighborhood has evolved a lot”we explain internally. Many discount stores have set up, bringing in a population looking for low prices, far from those who usually frequent Galeries Lafayette.
Conversely, the more middle-class clientele of the Prado shopping center, managed by Klépierre, where the Galleries were located when it opened in 2018, better corresponded to an offer focused on premium products. But the shopping center, which hoped for 7 million annual visitors, never took off, notably facing competition from Terrasses du Port, which arrived in 2014 and welcomes 9 million people each year. “The excessively long commercial vacancy of the center, combined with the difficulty of operating the store in the direct vicinity of the Stade-Vélodrome”according to the group, got the better of the economic activity of Galeries Lafayette Prado. As the commercial lease is expiring, the group has decided not to extend it.
-Support for 145 employees
The two stores in Marseille have been showing recurring losses for several years, to the tune of 10 million euros per year, despite significant investments. “This situation is no longer tenable today so as not to unbalance the performance of the rest of the French Galeries Lafayette network, which is part of a dynamic of positive and buoyant activity, and in which the company must continue to invest »said the group in a press release. He claims to have looked for a new location in Marseille without being successful.
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