Hundreds of jobs are lost: Esprit closes half of its branches

The fashion industry is facing tough competition on the Internet. Not everyone can keep up, not even wit. In addition, the company is suffering from a lack of sales in the Corona crisis. The label therefore wants to close around 50 stores in Germany, more than a thousand jobs will be wiped out.

The ailing fashion group Esprit plans to close every second branch in Germany and cut a total of around 1,100 jobs. The Federal Republic thus accounted for the lion's share of the job cuts, the company said: A total of 1200 jobs are to be cut worldwide. The job cuts are part of a restructuring plan, explained the fashion group, which had applied for bankruptcy protection for German companies. The administrator is the lawyer Biner Bähr.

The approximately 50 stores in Germany – half of the branch network in the Federal Republic – should close their doors by the end of November, it was said. With these measures, the Hong Kong-based group wants to permanently cut costs.

Numerous fashion chains suffer from fierce competition from online retailers from Amazon to Zalando. The corona pandemic and government regulations to curb it have exacerbated the situation – customers were temporarily unable to do business. Competitor Tom Tailor had also got into trouble. The local court of Essen opened insolvency proceedings today via the department store giant Galeria Karstadt Kaufhof – he also wants to close numerous branches.

The credit bureau Creditreform expects a further increase in the preliminary insolvency proceedings and insolvencies in the fashion industry in the coming months. "This time service providers, restaurants and (textile) retailers are not affected by the effects at the end of the crisis, but are at the beginning. Therefore, the number of insolvency-ready companies will inevitably increase," the Creditreform expert Patrick-Ludwig Hantzsch predicted. According to an industry survey by the "textile industry", sales in stationary fashion retail were 21 percent below the previous year's level in the past week.

. (tagsToTranslate) economy (t) fashion (t) retail (t) corona crisis (t) online shopping (t) bankruptcy