The fate of the 680 employees of San Marina will be sealed this week. Candidates for the takeover of the shoe brand in receivership since September 2022 must submit their file by Tuesday, February 7. But they are rare. Especially since the current shareholders are throwing in the towel.
Monday, February 6, during a videoconference, Laurent Portella and Stéphane Collaert announced to employee representatives that they were giving up presenting an offer. The two partners planned to stay “minority shareholder within a takeover structure” of 49 of 163 stores and about 200 employees, according to an internal memo that The world consulted.
But the two entrepreneurs did not obtain the hoped-for support from a “a major player in the footwear sector in Brazil”, they lamented with the employees. “As the conditions precedent linked to the offer could not be lifted, [celle-ci] cannot be supported at the hearing on February 10″, estimated Mr. Collaert and Mr. Portella, by press release, shortly after the meeting was held.
Another blow for the sector
According to union sources, three other candidates have come forward, but only for a few stores. The lingerie brand Valege is thus proposing to take over six points of sale. Consequently, the elected staff fear a liquidation of the chain which, after having bailed it out with 10 million euros, the Vivarte group had sold to a trio of entrepreneurs, at the start of 2020, formed by Laurent Portella, Stéphane Collaert and Thierry Le Guenic. The latter, shareholder of Paule Ka, Burton and Habitat, has since withdrawn from the capital. In January 2022, the shareholders of San Marina also bought Minelli, a chain at the head of 260 points of sale and employing nearly 700 employees. Still at the Vivarte group.
The liquidation of the San Marina brand would be a new blow for employment in the retail sector in France. 1er October 2022, the 511 Camaïeu stores have closed their doors for good, three days after the court-ordered liquidation of the brand owned by the Financière immobilière bordelaise (FIB), property of businessman Michel Ohayon. This procedure led to the dismissal of its 2,100 employees.
Since then, several channels have announced that they have been placed in receivership. Among them is Kookaï, another channel owned by Vivarte. Founded in 1981, San Marina was a success story in the 1990s. Its extremely simple store concept ensured very good profitability. The layout of each shop requires neither furniture nor storage: the shoe models are presented on stacks of shoeboxes. But, since its creation, the city shoe market has slipped away from under its feet: it is suffering from the surge in sales of sneakers that men and women now wear on a daily basis.