00:00It's time now for our Entre-Nous segment with Solange Mougin, who joins me on the set.
00:03Hi, Solange.
00:04Hi, Katie.
00:05So here in France, it's sales time.
00:06There are these biannual sales that start today, mostly across the country, but there
00:10are a lot of shop owners who really aren't entering into this particular season with
00:14high hopes.
00:15Why?
00:16Well, normally the sales in France are an exciting time, of course, for consumers looking
00:21for a bargain, but also for retailers as it allows them to get rid of their stock and
00:26to get people in the shops.
00:27January is, in fact, the second most important shopping month for clothing and shoes in France.
00:34This is after December with Christmas purchases.
00:37But increasingly, a number of shop owners are saying that the timing is off for these
00:42winter sales, that they aren't as effective as they once were.
00:45Not only do they come just after the holidays, where some households may have stretched their
00:49budgets a bit, but they also come on the heels of the increasingly popular Black Friday discounts,
00:55which in France is often actually spread out over a number of weeks in November and
00:59sometimes even into December.
01:00Now, according to a poll by the Union of Independent and Small Shop Owners, the majority of these
01:06retailers will participate in the sales and the discounts, but nearly nine out of ten
01:11of them say that they are worried about the economic climate, and 64% say that these sales
01:17will not be sufficient to sell off their stock.
01:20So there are increasingly pushes among some retailers to have the government either change
01:25the dates of the sales or to make them a bit shorter and a bit snappier, more of an event.
01:29Because we have to remind everyone that actually the rules in France over sales and discounts
01:33are quite strict.
01:34Yeah, they are.
01:35And they have been since 1906, when the government set up a law to ensure that the prices didn't
01:40continue to drop between the newly created Grands Magasins, or competing department stores.
01:46Since then, there have been a number of laws that have tried to keep up with changing consumer habits.
01:51Currently, the rules in France are the following.
01:54There are two official sales periods of the year.
01:56The winter ones begin in most of the country on the second Wednesday of January.
02:00So this year it's between January 8th and February 4th.
02:04The summer ones generally begin on the last Wednesday of June, and they also last for
02:10four weeks for a month.
02:11As for the rules, this is the only time that businesses can sell at a loss, with discounts
02:16often going to the minus 70% range.
02:19Both the original price and the discounted price need to be shown on the little tags
02:25to keep shops from cheating with, say, subpar items that are made just for the sales, while
02:31the product must also be purchasable for at least a month before the sales start.
02:36And also, and this is important, the word sold or sales cannot be used at any other
02:41time of the year.
02:43Retailers risk hefty fines if they do this.
02:46And retailers do do other discounts at other times of the year.
02:49They often have to use terms like vente privée, bonnes affaires, promotion, which cannot be
02:55as big of a bargain as les soldes.
02:59Even if some shop owners aren't that optimistic about this year, others are, as Black Friday's
03:06figures this year were actually quite good, and some French people, while they still do
03:10wait for the sales, which means that it can be a busy time and generally is a busy time
03:14in shops and online.
03:16Be it in the summer or winter, sales are always a key moment.
03:21It's always a time when we have to be ready.
03:26It represents some 40% of our yearly revenue between the summer and winter sales.
03:31So we're expecting to have four intense weeks.
03:35So some clothing retailers, they're talking about the sales, but their sector is actually
03:38going through quite a tumultuous time at the moment.
03:40Yeah, according to the French Institute of Fashion, or the IFM, clothing sales in France
03:47in 2024 were stable.
03:49That is if we compare them to the previous year, to 2023.
03:52However, compared to five years prior to 2019 or pre-COVID, last year's sale figures were
03:58still 7% down from pre-COVID times.
04:03So inflation has and continues to take its toll on the sector, which overall employs
04:07a million people in France and brings in some 154 billion euros.
04:12Now, many of these jobs are less secure than they once were.
04:16In 2023, the fashion industry lost at least 4,000 jobs, according to the sector's Chamber
04:22of Commerce.
04:23Overall, it says that 37,000 jobs have been cut over the past decade.
04:28Major French mid-range brands like Camailleur, San Marino for shoes, they have gone bankrupt.
04:34Others like Naf-Naf, Pinky, Gap have shut their shops, gone largely online, or stopped
04:39selling in France entirely.
04:41Even the iconic Galerie Lafayette, the department store, has had to be saved from shuttering.
04:47The reasons for these struggles are many.
04:49There's a boom of cheaper clothes, of fashion.
04:53There's of course inflation and household tightening of their belts.
04:56There's also the cost of retail real estate, combined with shoppers increasingly purchasing
05:02online.
05:03And there is, of course, the growing second-hand market.
05:06But there is a little bit of a glimmer of hope for this sector, and that at least the
05:11morose showing of last summer's sales and the post-COVID slump may be coming to an end.
05:17Revenue at the end of 2024 was up by nearly 3% across some 60 major brands.
05:23But nonetheless, French people continue to save their pennies not to spend.
05:27There's some 6,000 billion euros deposited in savings accounts in France.
05:31We'll have to see if the French want to spend some of that money over les soldes or not.
05:37It's true.
05:38The French are record savers.
05:39All right, Solange.
05:40Thanks for that look at the sales.
05:41And go out there and have fun if you want to take advantage of the sales yourself and
05:44if you're in France at this time of year.
05:46Thank you so much.
Comments