(AOF) – Miliboo, a digital furniture brand, recorded a turnover down 6.3% to 11 million euros, including more than 9 million collected on the French market, for the second quarter of 2023 /2024. Despite a sluggish furniture market, turnover for the first half of 2023/2024 stood at 21.7 million euros, an increase of 1.7%, constituting a new half-year record for the company launched in 2005.
Miliboo’s main priority, the gross margin rate stands at a historically high level in the first half of 2023/2024, driven by better purchasing conditions (raw materials, international freight and euro-dollar parity), accompanied by a rigorous management of offers. This progression will thus allow a strong improvement in half-yearly operational profitability with half-yearly EBITDA which will be greater than +1 million euros.
Miliboo will open a new store before the end of the year, which will bring the number of showrooms in France to 4, thus continuing the deployment of its reasoned phygital strategy.
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Concerns remain
According to the Federation of Specialized Trade, Procos, in October 2022, activity fell by 1.5% year-on-year. However, the activity of beauty and health (+ 5.2%) and specialized food (+ 3.5%) are dynamic compared to October 2021. Attendance at points of sale was very impacted by the problems fuel and unfavorable weather. Compared to October 2019, a pre-covid year, the drop in attendance is very sharp (-20.9% in October). Shopping centers and the outskirts are more impacted than city centers with a gap of four to five points.
There are several reasons for concern for the future. The players are experiencing a very significant jaws effect given the increase in their operating costs while the evolution of demand is very uncertain. Very few brands can pass on the increase in their costs in sales prices. The federation therefore asks, among other things, to limit the indexation of the Commercial Rent Index to + 3.5% for the rents of all companies in 2023. It also invokes an absolute emergency: cap the price of energy for 2023 and retroact on contracts already signed to prevent the rate of failures from accelerating.