The family empire continues to grow. Seven brands from the board sports specialist Boardriders come under the control of the French Beaumanoir (La Halle, Cache Cache, Bonobo, Caroll, etc.) for a period of fifteen years in “twenty countries” of Western Europe, specifies the group’s management.
If Quiksilver, Billabong, Roxy, DC Shoes, Element, RVCA and VonZipper remain the property of the American group Authentic Brands Group, their operation will now be ensured by the Breton giant. Validated by the Competition Authority, the agreement signed Tuesday June 4 and communicated Wednesday June 5, provides that Beaumanoir manages “part design, production and distribution” of these board sports brands in Western Europe.
Good news marred by a job protection plan (PSE) which aims to eliminate the positions of 164 employees at the Saint-Jean de Luz headquarters (Pyrénées-Atlantique). This operation “led directly by Boardriders”underlines Beaumanoir, also plans the creation of 44 jobs. “There are 120 net positions eliminated”, calculates the direction, before specifying that “all store jobs are saved”, or a thousand positions. The Breton company, which employs 15,000 people worldwide, insists on the absence of a link between this PES and the “negotiations with the Beaumanoir Group”.
Several social plans
The headquarters of Boardriders Europe, which today has 563 employees, will remain in Saint-Jean-de-Luz, in the Basque Country, in its historic premises. He “will not be repatriated to Saint-Malo” (Ille-et-Vilaine) where Beaumanoir is based, his boss promised.
In Saint-Jean de Luz, a town renowned for its employment area in the water sports sector, mayor Jean-François Irigoyen describes the acquisition of the brands as” a bad for a good “. For more than ten years, the company has been tested by several social plans, without ever managing to turn things around. After 38 job cuts in 2013, it underwent a new restructuring plan in 2016, then 136 layoffs in 2019. More recently, Boardriders’ net loss plunged, passing, according to the financial information site on companies Pappers, from 4 million euros in 2022 to 112 million euros in 2023.
“We went through a very complicated period, from 2016 to 2023summarized Nicolas Foulet, president of Boardriders for the Europe zone on a daily basis South West. We curled up on ourselves. With the Beaumanoir group, we are going to reinvest the city centers that we had left. »
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