Gap France ceases its online sales “temporarily” … before the cessation of payment?


Alexander Boero

February 21, 2023 at 2:15 p.m.

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GAP logo © Shutterstock

© Sorbis / Shutterstock

The Gap France brand indicates on its website that it is temporarily suspending its online activities. Behind the scenes, the declaration of cessation of payment would be prepared. What plunge a little more the empire of Michel Ohayon in the crisis.

Dear customers, dear customers, we are temporarily forced to stop e-commerce orders to guarantee a sufficient quality of service, please excuse us. We meet you in stores. This message is the one you can find on the home page of the Gap France website, which has therefore stopped its e-commerce activity. Unofficially, the brand is in great difficulty and could declare itself in default of payment in the coming days.

An increasingly visible physical sales crisis

Times are tough for ready-to-wear brands. Barely hours after the confirmation by the Commercial Court of Marseille of the end of the San Marina adventure (163 stores), it is now the teams of Gap France who are in turmoil, after the announcement of the stop online sales. Expecting worse.

Gap France homepage

Screenshot of the message found on the Gap France home page © Gap France

CFDT union representative of the sign, Brayan Brandao told AFP that the online sales activity has been closed for a week. He also confirmed that one of the brand’s stores located in Paris should definitely lower the curtain by the end of March.

If the parent company of Gap France, Hermione People & Brands, did not want to confirm or deny this information, the brand which today employs 350 people in France is finding it increasingly difficult to bear the cost of rents for its physical stores. In the case of the Parisian store preparing to close, the owner re-evaluated the cost from simple to double, the rent becoming too high in relation to the turnover of the store.

The decline of physical stores, caused by the giants of online sales and profitable for them?

The cessation of online sales coupled with the prospect of closure(s) is not a good sign for Gap France. The French subsidiary belongs to a certain Michel Ohayon who accumulates crises. After making a fortune in real estate, he bought various retail brands. Among them, Camaïeu no longer exists, and Go Sport is in receivership and could suffer the same fate. Gap France is looking for buyers, just like the sports brand for that matter.

In addition, Ohayon owns around thirty Galeries Lafayette stores for which it has just requested the opening of a safeguard procedure. Companies that make such a request no longer have sufficient cash to settle their debts. This is a possible step prior to a cessation of payment. Potential buyers of Go Sport and Gap France have until March 10 to come forward.

In the meantime, the crisis in physical stores has for several years now benefited major e-commerce players, foreign or French, such as Amazon, Cdiscount, Showroomprive.com and others. The latter caused it a little originally and are in the process of shaking up, even reinventing the ready-to-wear economy, to the detriment of local shops.

Sources: LSA, Le Figaro



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