Should we perceive in this sudden announcement a shift in the French craze for discount and clearance stores? Stokomani’s social and economic committee (CSE) was urgently convened on Friday March 29 to announce the departure of Damien Defforey, its president. Former CEO of C & A in France, he was appointed on May 31, 2022, just after the purchase of the brand by the Zouari family.
A recruitment process has been launched to find a successor to the one who “left by mutual agreement”, assures a spokesperson for the brand specializing in clearance. In the meantime, a new provisional organization should be communicated to staff representatives during the day of Tuesday, April 2. But, this change comes at a time when Stockomani may not have achieved the results his owners expected.
In recent years, thanks to a general rise in prices, discount and clearance brands have been on the rise. They constitute a way for the French to reduce the amount of the receipt in order to maintain a lifestyle without putting too much strain on a budget which has contracted under the effect of a 20% increase in food prices. In two years. Many people do their grocery shopping there, buying chips and sodas but also hygiene and cleaning products, the prices of which have soared in traditional supermarkets.
Store openings
Over the past three years, the number of checkouts in sales stores such as Action, Noz, and Stokomani has jumped 87%, according to the 2023 report on consumption in France from the NielsenIQ firm. In 2023, 33% of the growth in sales of drugstore, hygiene and maintenance items (DPH) comes from other channels, in particular hypermarkets..
The leader in the field of non-food discounters, Action, with more than 800 stores in France, was for the second year in a row elected “favorite brand of the French” in 2024 by the EY-Parthenon firm, in its annual study published at the end of March. According to NielsenIQ, the turnover of the Dutch brand established in France since the end of 2012 jumped by 24% in 2023. And the number of households who come to shop there increased by 18%.
At Stokomani, a specialist in clearance of major brands created in 1961, we were riding this wave of discount consumption, in the furrow dug by Action. More than 250,000 new customers visited its shelves in the first nine months of the year and the company posted 4% growth on a comparable basis, according to our information.
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