The sales started at 8 a.m. on Wednesday January 8. During this period, retailers may sell at a loss, to get rid of end-of-collections or empty their stocks. But this year, independent traders are categorical, the sales arrive too quickly.
Fur-lined shoes, boots, ankle boots, Romain Flandrin still has plenty of stock in his various businesses in the North. And he is not the only one: according to a survey by the independent trade union, among four out of ten traders, 30 to 40% of winter stock is still sleeping in reserves. This is not only linked to the relatively mild weather this winter, but also to the customers, who have become real strategists, according to the shoe store manager. “The average consumer says to himself 'I'm not going to buy on December 15 knowing that I will have sales periods at the beginning of January. I'm slowing down my purchases'. And so we have a big slowdown over the December period, and inevitably a loss of overall turnover for this month.”
And the retailer fears a second slow period at the end of the sales, at the beginning of February. “That means that after that, we no longer sell in winter. So there is a second gap because we wonder what we are going to sell in February”announces Romain Flandrin. Conclusion: the sales start too early.
This summer, the sales are currently scheduled from June 25 to July 22. Traders are asking to postpone them by at least three weeks, starting around July 14. But what seems obvious to some is not at all obvious to others: “In Paris, from July 1st, everyone goes on vacation, so going on sales in August is perhaps less interestingexplain Antoine Garnaud, slipper specialist in Charente. But retailers on the Atlantic and Mediterranean coasts are not going to have sales in July-August since that is precisely when all the customers are there.”
“As someone who is in Charente, I know that from the beginning of July or mid-July, customers leave for the coast and I have fewer customers. We would have to move back three weeks, a month.”
-Antoine Garnaud, merchant in Charenteat franceinfo
For the Confederation of French Traders, which brings together a million jobs, the problem is broader. Between private sales, Black Friday and one-off promotions, customers no longer imagine buying at full rate. “This great fog linked to multiple promotions devalues the sales period, and in particular the start of the salesregret Pierre Bosche, president of the confederation. Sales allow merchants to empty their previous collections so that they can accommodate the next collection. This is the soul of sales. We have to come back to that and no longer make it a marketing tool for permanent promotion where, in the end, no one understands anything anymore.”
Notice to the French who have never saved so much and consumed so little, the sales will end on February 4.
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