2023-09-06 13:41:16
Employees of the sign, which includes 131 stores and 660 employees, fear a “social damage”.
It adds to the sad list of struggling ready-to-wear companies: the Naf Naf brand was placed in receivership on Wednesday, in debt in particular due to unpaid rent during the Covid crisis. “We will do everything to get Naf Naf back on its feet in the coming yearpromised SY leader Selçuk Yilmaz, owner of Naf Naf, in an interview with AFP. “(Service providers) must not confuse us with Camaïeu and all those other companies that have failed to recover from the crisis in the “retail””, at-il have you.
Positioned in the mid-range, Naf Naf is a French ready-to-wear brand, is a French brand launched in 1973 by two brothers and now owned by the Franco-Turkish group SY employs 660 people in France, owns 135 stores and posted in 2022 a turnover of 141 million euros, “growing“, had declared at the end of August a spokesperson to AFP. But it is heavily in debt, in particular due to unpaid rent since 2020, and was placed in receivership on Wednesday by the Bobigny commercial court (Seine-Saint-Denis), with an observation period of six months.
«The rents have generally been paid“but the company is in negotiation with certain lessors to revalue them downwards, “especially in shopping malls“where they are”more in line with turnover“, explained the lawyer of the group Virginie Dupé, of the cabinet Hyest. “There is a responsibility of landlords because rents in the city center are exorbitant“, also estimated Aurélie Flisar, deputy general secretary at the CFDT. In this crisis that the ready-to-wear is going through, the trade unionist fears for the employees, “mostly women part-time“who feel”destitute, with complicated job prospects».
Read alsoCamaïeu, Pimkie, Burton… The endless curtain fall on ready-to-wear brands
Second receivership
Naf Naf’s debts now stand at 60 million euros, according to a source familiar with the matter. The company had already been placed in receivership in May 2020 and taken over by the Franco-Turkish group SY International, which is still its shareholder and which employs 1,500 people directly worldwide, and which had already acquired the sign Sinéquanone in 2019.
It had begun to restructure and cut 35 positions in June 2023 as part of a PSE, recalled Angélique Idali, secretary of the CSE and CFDT union representative, 87% majority at Naf Naf. “We know that there will be store closures, a priori about twenty, and a new PSE at headquarters, which will move“, she fears. “This is the second receivership in three years, so there is a lot of concern, distrust, fear“, according to the trade unionist who hopes that will be avoided”at most one social break».
In addition to the Covid-19 crisis, the company has been hard hit in recent years by “the repeated demonstrations of the yellow vests then against the pension reform», «the war in Ukraine which caused an inflationary shock and soaring prices for energy, raw materials and transport” as well as “foreign competition whose questionable means of production offer it unfair competitiveness».
The ready-to-wear sector in France has been shaken for several months by a violent crisis. Camaïeu, Kookaï, Burton of London, Gap France, André, San Marina, Kaporal, Don’t Call Me Jennyfer, Du Pareil au Même and Sergent Major… These brands well known to French consumers suffered from an explosive cocktail: pandemic, inflation, rising costs of energy, raw materials, rents and wages or even competition from second-hand and fast fashion.
It was fatal for certain brands, which were liquidated, such as Camaïeu in September 2022, whose dismissal of 2,100 employees made a strong impression. Others are in receivership, such as Kookaï or Burton of London. Without reaching that point, still others are cutting back, cutting staff and closing stores, such as Princesse Tam Tam, Comptoir des Cotonniers (Fast Retailing group) or Pimkie.
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