The challenge is major. Spring hopes “to reach a turnover of 1.7 billion within three years”, recalled Jean-Marc Bellaïche, chairman of the group, during a press conference on Tuesday 15 March. The distributor, which, among other things, owns the department stores Printemps and Citadium (29 units), would then return to the level of activity for the financial year ended at the end of March 2018, over twelve full months, before the start of the pandemic due to the Covid-19 which amputated several weeks of activity in 2020 then 2021, estimates the leader. Until then, the firm expects “return to profitability in 2023”, he specifies, without however revealing the group’s 2021 turnover “down 12% compared to 2019”, or the amount of its operating losses.
This former Boston Consulting Group consultant, appointed head of Printemps in October 2020, must keep the faith. Because the prospects for Parisian commerce, very dependent on tourism, are hardly encouraging: department stores and luxury boutiques have still not emerged from the health crisis, failing to welcome the Chinese who have made their fortune and financed their expansion. . “In the last quarter of 2021, the French tax-free shopping market, carried out with foreign tourists, represented 58% of the activity carried out in 2019”, recalls Mathieu Grac, vice-president of Global Blue, a company that manages tax refunds in stores.
The war in Ukraine now raises fears of a new decline in tourism in the capital. However, Printemps is hardly worried about the absence of Russian tourists in its stores; the latter generate only 1.5% of its sales in France. And, overall, they only represent “5% of tourists who make tax-free purchases in France”, according to Global Blue. However, they were already not in the streets of Paris in the summer of 2021: Sputnik V, the vaccine dispensed in Russia, was not eligible for the European health pass.
“New blow”
The concern is elsewhere. She resides in the “perception by international tourists” of Europe as a tourist destination while “War is at its doorstep” believes Mr. Grac. All Parisian distributors had already mourned Asian tourists. Starting with Galeries Lafayette, the leader in department stores, at the head of 65 points of sale, or La Samaritaine, a 20,000 m² department store that the LVMH group inaugurated in June 2021. They will not be back “before mid-2023 beginning of 2024”, judges the president of Printemps. From then on, retailers were once again banking on silver Americans and residents of Middle Eastern countries to keep their stores running. Printemps was delighted to see them back in the summer of 2021. What will happen in the summer of 2022? “We will have to do without. It’s a new blow”, says an elected employee of Printemps. In 2018, 20 million visitors entered Printemps Boulevard Haussmann.
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