2024-02-10 04:00:35
Frédéric Born has run a Peugeot two-wheel dealership on avenue de Saint-Ouen (18th century) for 22 years. On March 31, 2024, he will permanently close the doors of his store, in front of which three scooters lined up await repair this January morning. “At the time, they occupied the sidewalk for 10 m,” sighs Frédéric.
According to the Solly Azar AAA-Data Observatory, in 2023 Paris will record a drop in sales of thermal scooters of less than 50 cm3 of 19% over one year. In total, of the 480 establishments present in the capital, 28 closed down during the year. Of the eight Peugeot dealerships installed in the capital at the start of 2023, only three are still present. For Frédéric, whose father already ran a dealership on Avenue de la Grande Armée (17th century) which closed in 2008, it was the “end of a world”, which he experienced for almost thirty years.
Teleworking, paid parking, traffic restrictions…
“What we experienced between 2002 and 2020 is over,” Frédéric resolves. Although he has not “suffered too much” from the health crisis linked to Covid, the changes in lifestyle since the pandemic have had consequences on his activity. With the generalization of teleworking, two-wheelers are circulating less: a snowball effect for the manager who has seen repair requests, the most profitable part of his activity, collapse. In 2023, according to our estimates, 5.8% of scooter repairers will have closed shop.
In addition to teleworking, according to Frédéric, there are restrictions on the circulation of two-wheelers within Paris itself, and in particular the ban on riding between two lines. “The fines are becoming more regular and the time saved by zigzags no longer exists,” explains Frédéric, receiving a form of weariness from his customers, leading them to abandon their motorized vehicle, often to switch to mechanical bicycles. or electric.
Usually, Benjamin changes his scooter every three years. “Today, I have been driving with the same one for five years: I have no interest in investing if I can no longer drive freely in Paris,” he regrets. But what decided most of Frédéric’s customers was the move, since September 1, 2022, to paid parking for thermal engine two-wheelers. And the figures speak for themselves: “I sold around fifteen vehicles per month. Overnight, I went to two or three.”
“My business has become unsellable”
“I understand that my clients do not want to add an additional tax”, opines the one whose “boss is the client”: this regulation has finished swallowing him up. In total, this is 30% less turnover for Frédéric, who loses 4,000 to 5,000 euros in profit per month and eats into his cash flow to pay his expenses. Even if you “get your hands dirty” to reduce your payroll, the rent remains too high to bear. The observation is therefore clear: for Frédéric, his activity has “become unsaleable”.
To reduce his costs, Frédéric Born returned to mechanics and only employs one person in his dealership on Avenue de Saint-Ouen (18th century).
Responsible for one of the three “La Clinique du Scooter” stores in the 14th arrondissement, Thomas Bou Hanna is waiting until the end of 2024 before deciding on a possible closure. “What has completely hit the nail on the head is inflation: in fact, mobility is moving into third or even fourth place,” he analyzes.
“I would only waste five minutes if I rode an electric bike”
For Matthieu, Frédéric’s customer for 15 years, this free fall is the result of a “hunt for thermal engines”. He still uses his scooter daily, which he still finds “much simpler”. But the fifty-year-old recognizes that it is above all a story of a generation not necessarily ready to change its habits. “I feel selfish, I keep my two-wheeler out of laziness but making the transition to soft mobility remains logical, physically and ecologically speaking,” he admits.
Unaffected by paid parking, electric scooters have quickly become the ideal fallback solution. But after a sales boom in 2022, the attraction for these vehicles quickly ran out of steam: sales fell by 16% over the year 2023 according to the Solly Azar AAA-Data Observatory. Frédéric has not tried electric. “I would have had to sell around fifty per month to be profitable,” he comments. Without forgetting that an electric scooter requires much fewer repairs than a thermal scooter, the primary source of profitability for dealers.
A long-term project of the City of Paris, the transition to electric also extends to bicycles, the use of which has been boosted by the creation of around a hundred cycle paths in the capital since 2020. Matthieu concedes, with the reduction of lanes for motorists and two-wheelers, “I would only lose five minutes if I rode an electric bike”.
Frédéric also did not want to try to sell these fashionable bicycles. “We changed our philosophy: we cannot find the green spirit in my thermal store. No one would have the idea of coming to my house to buy an electric bike,” says the dealer, who sold nearly 300 bikes per year in the 1990s.
The suburbs less affected
Matthieu, owner of a two-wheeler, only uses it occasionally. For his intramural journeys, he now prefers the electric bike because “the price of parking is exorbitant”. But for Frédéric, the transition to the electric bike is also a matter of situation. “Those who really suffer are the inhabitants of the outer suburbs, especially since public transport to the suburbs is not efficient,” he argues, himself residing in Ermont (Val-d’Oise) .
Among his customers who are always there, we also find “restaurant owners but also many people working in the night world, who could neither return by bike nor take the metro, closed at the times that concern them”, defends the concessionaire, who is considering a reconversion to a completely different sector in Gironde. For the moment, Paris, Vincennes, Charenton (Val-de-Marne) and Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) apply paid parking for two-wheelers with thermal engines.
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