The ball in the belly, they tightened around the computer. It was May 19, at the end of the day, and Philippe Favre, the general manager of Pimkie, was speaking to them by interposed screen. “We knew it was going to hit us, but we didn’t expect to be sold”, says Lucie (her first name has been changed), busy storing shirts on hangers in the Roubaix store. A colleague confides her anguish: “What will become of us? Already, we are almost all part-time, we struggle. What’s tomorrow? » Like most Pimkie salespeople, she works twenty-four hours a week and has “fear of unemployment”. Karine Thérage, store manager in Noyelles-Godault (Pas-de-Calais) and CFE-CGC delegate, talks about reactions “mixed”. “Saleswomen are in denial, but most reacted badly right away”, she adds.
The day before, a CSE had been held, “and we learned that Philippe Favre would speak the next day”, says Sandra Morin, CGT delegate, who works at Rosny-2. Like other union representatives and many employees of this brand, founded in 1971, owned by the Mulliez Family Association (AFM), she knew that “something was in the pipeline, but we were thinking more of a PSE”. The last dates back to 2018. Thirty-seven stores closed, 208 jobs cut. It was already an electroshock. At the helm at the time, the firm Prospheres, specializing in corporate restructuring, from which comes the new general manager, appointed last January. “This is the fifth CEO in five years”, note Force Ouvrière which talks about “hazardous appointments to the governance of Pimkie.” They accumulated strategic errors. » The bleeding of 2018 was not enough to recover Pimkie, which achieved nearly 200 million euros in sales in 2020, and today has 232 own stores in addition to 81 affiliated for 1,500 employees.
Des fortunes diverses
In a ready-to-wear sector that has been swaying since the early 1990s, Pimkie has tried parades. The consolidation within the FashionCube group of the six AFM fashion brands, “to cope with the successive turbulences” et “start a movement of transformation with the common ambition of creating a new business model with a positive impact”as its leader Jean-Christophe Garbino explained when it was created, did not save Pimkie.
The latter left FashionCube (1.5 billion euros in turnover), on May 25. Within this group (Jules, BZB – formerly Bizzbee –, Grain de Malice, Pimkie, RougeGorge, Orsay), the brands have since had mixed fortunes. If Jules and Grain de Malice went back to development projects, Pimkie continued to sink. Outsourcing and pooling (purchasing, logistics, IT, design office, data processing, etc.) have not all been successful. “We had major delivery problems when the logistics moved to Logs. It didn’t help”regrets Sandra Morin.
You have 52.01% of this article left to read. The following is for subscribers only.