Maisons du monde does not escape the ambient gloom of consumption. Present in nine countries in Europe, the furniture and decorative items brand saw its sales fall by 9.3% in 2023, to 1.13 billion euros. The drop in its turnover was more marked internationally (– 12.9%) than in France (– 6.2%). And stronger in decorative items (–9.9%), where the group achieves 57.6% of its sales, than in furniture (–8.4%). Results: a net profit divided by three over one year, to 8.8 million euros, compared to 34.2 million in 2022 – it had already been divided by two that year.
“I am not going to hide behind external factors to explain our disappointing results, even if our activity was not favored by the macroeconomic context”commented on Tuesday March 12, François-Melchior de Polignac, general director of Maisons du monde during the presentation of the brand’s new strategic plan for 2024-2026 called Inspire Everyday.
“We were probably too optimistic” after historic post-Covid results, and “too focused on expansion and investment”rather than on “operational execution and customers”added the man who, after twenty-two years spent with the mass distribution group Carrefour, succeeded in March 2023 from Julie Walbaum, in position since 2018.
The economic and financial situation therefore requires urgent shock treatment. in order to relaunch a group whose turnover is declining for the second consecutive year: 25% reduction in assortment, price reduction on 2,000 products, rationalization of the store network to eliminate sources of loss, and use of other, less capital-intensive store operating methods, such as affiliation or franchise. The group announced “forty to fifty store closures-transfers and around 30% of the network in franchise affiliation by 2026”. At the end of 2023, Maisons du monde owned 340 stores, after having sold eighteen points of sale, five of which were transferred to affiliates.
Listed on the Stock Exchange, the distributor of furniture and decorative objects took care to specify in a second step that“in no case are there net closures of forty to fifty stores”but of “transfers and closures of stores over a period of three years corresponding to a normal rhythm of the life of a network” distribution, with its rent renegotiations, its movement of points of sale from the city center to a commercial activity zone… The brand adds that the strategic plan implemented will even lead to an increase in their number to reach 400 in 2026, “while continuing the pragmatic sanitation of the park”.
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