The Happychic ready-to-wear group will delete 466 positions<

La famille Mulliez est de nouveau confrontée à une crise. Les enseignes Jules, Brice et Bizzbee que détient l’Association familiale Mulliez (AFM) ont annoncé, mardi 17 juillet, envisager « un plan de transformation » qui, à terme, entraînerait la « fermeture de 88 » de ses 543 magasins en France et « la suppression de 466 emplois ».

For the Minister of Labor, Muriel Pénicaud, these positions of posts show that "we cannot keep the trades of the past" and that workers must be trained in the "professions of the future".

The very discreet northern family must already compose with the difficulties of the Auchan group, faced with the decline of hypermarkets, with those of Pimkie, chain battered by the poor health of the female fashion market, and at the start of Matthieu Leclercq, President of theAdministration of Décathlon, another figure of its heritage.This time, it is the turn of its three male fashion brands, Jules, Brice and Bizzbee, grouped within the Happychic entity (720 million euros in sales), to face winds contrary.

Sales have been declining "for seven years", claims Jean-ChristopheGarbino, Managing Director of Happychic for a year.The year 2018 started very badly."The drop in activity borders on 10 %.We must find a turnover sufficient to bear our costs, our costs and our rents, "he said.Otherwise, assures this former Kiabi CEO, the firm would fall into the red.

" This is unheard of "

By winning 466 job cuts, the group breaks with social methods of use within the Mulliez dynasty." This is unheard of.Usually, the management closes only a few stores, "deplores Laurent Petit, CGT union delegate, elected within the works council at Jules for ten years.

Do I Learn How to do Trigonometry, or Review Several Chapters Worth of Latin Vocabulary that the day?

— least Mon Jan 24 01:17:36 +0000 2011

But, to believe M.Garbino, Happychic "no longer has time" to proceed "step by step".Because it evolves on a disputed male fashion market where "the worst is to come", he dares, waving the red cloth of the American Amazon and the Chinese Alibaba.

Grouped within the Happychic economic unit since 2009, Jules, Brice and Bizzbee are, however, three specialists established in male fashion;They operate 720 stores, including a majority in France (306 Jules stores, 172 Brice and 65 Bizzbee, for adolescents).Installed in Roubaix (North), since 2009, the whole has been a heritage of Camaïeu Men, a brand bought by AFM and renamed Jules in 1999, and Brice, costume chain sold at low prices created at Le Mans and bought by the'AFM in 2003 to its founder, Dominique Marcadé.

Since then, the group has never dared to merge the Roubaisien Jules and the Manceau Brice 100 %, preferring to see the complementarity of the two networks.Although Eternal Number two of the market, behind Celio, Jules has long been a star, that of shopping centers."In the 2000s, the brand displayed a yield per square meter of 10,000 euros," admits M.Garbino.

Facing the challenges of the "distribution of tomorrow"

Brice has "never earned money", he swears.Founded in 1985 while the fashion of the costume was raging, a time listed on the Paris Stock Exchange, it now suffers from a total reversal of the male market.Men rarely put on a suit, even if it is slim.They prefer jeans.And, under the Diktat of the Promo, the set rate that applies to the brands to their collections to seduce their customers reached "25 % today, against 17 % five years ago", reports Laurent Thoumine, director of the poleDistribution, fashion and luxury within the Accenture consulting firm.From then on, the three-room specialist loses hope of making results.

With the approval of Philippe Van der Wees, representative of the Mulliez family as president of the Happychic council since June 2017, it will reduce its operating costs, by closing its warehouse in Le Mans where 48 people are used.And, in the long term, the Brice brand should disappear by merging with Jules, under a new name.

The announcement of this project comes as M.Garbino doit mener la mission « Fashion³ » censée mettre en commun « les bonnes recettes » des enseignes de mode masculine et féminine détenues par l’AFM pour faire face aux enjeux de la « distribution de demain ».The former boss of Kiabi, however, denies any merger project of Pimkie and Jules who, internally, for eighteen months, at the headquarters of Roubaix, arouses the dread of his leaders.