The French clothing store chain Burton of London will close 26 of its 109 outlets in France on Saturday February 25, as part of a job protection plan which includes “maximum” the dismissal of 221 of the 441 employees, according to concordant sources. The group, bought for a symbolic euro at the end of 2020 by the entrepreneur Thierry Le Guénic, had been placed in the safeguard procedure in October 2022.
The stores in Aix-en-Provence, Clermont-Ferrand, La Roche-sur-Yon, Créteil, Montauban and even Paris Montparnasse will close, among others, Anne-Marie announced to Agence France-Presse (AFP) on Friday. Da Costa, union representative of the CFTC.
The union, the majority at Burton, specifies that according to the job protection plan approved a few days ago with the Drieets (Regional and Interdepartmental Directorate for the Economy, Employment, Labor and Solidarity) “221 employees out of 441 will be laid off” et “62 stores will be closed or sold and only 47 will remain open”. The CFTC denounces in a press release “a real social disaster, especially since the job protection plan provides for very weak or even deplorable social measures, while the manager owns several companies with colossal resources”.
“We have to make the company profitable”
For his part, Thierry Le Guenic, majority shareholder, told AFP that the company had “was put on hold in order to create a new project for Burton, which involves the fact that we must make the company profitable”. “The 26 stores that close to the public on Saturday are stores that have not been profitable for ten years, we cannot keep them”he detailed.
The figure of 221 layoffs for 441 employees “It’s the maximum of the maximum, but I think we’ll be closer to 110 or 120” through store disposals. “For me, the priority is to sell them with the takeover of staff”he said.
Concerning the 47 points of sale that the group is not closing or not trying to sell: the women’s collections will disappear to be “refocus on people” and points of sale “will welcome other brands” than Burton of London. In 2020, Thierry Le Guénic also bought the furniture brand Habitat from the Cafom group as well as, with the investor Stéphane Collaert, the shoemaker San Marina, placed in compulsory liquidation on Monday.