In the Grand Est and in Alsace, many businesses will need to be taken over in the coming years. This is the result of an INSEE survey on the age of business leaders.
The observation is also more striking in the Haut-Rhin than the Bas-Rhinwith a greater number of people over the age of 50.
The suit tailor must lower the curtain, after looking for a taker for 15 years
In the crafts sector, in the Haut-Rhin, in 2021, out of nearly 19,000 establishments, nearly 5,000 were led by people aged 55 and over, i.e. nearly 26%. The issue of transmission is therefore very important for the maintenance of know-how, jobs and local service.
– Guillaume Chhum
In Colmar, after looking for a buyer for 15 years, Giuseppe Bono has resigned himself to lowering his curtain definitively on June 30th. Open since 1994 in the district of little Venice, it has searched and searched for a buyer, but in vain.
Disappearing local service
He has however tried to train a young person in his very specialized profession and that takes a lot of time, but no one showed up.
“The difficulty is to find someone who is really skilled in the trade and not really a handyman. Here the clientele is used to having above-average quality,” explains Giuseppe Bono. The craftsman will lower his share with some regrets and will leave his numerous clientele orphaned. “Most craft businesses are very small businesses. The entrepreneur and his business are one. It is always very difficult to replace someone who is omnipresent, in the oven and in the mill,” notes Nicolas Hauss, in charge of transmission files at the Chamber of Craft Trades in the Haut-Rhin.
It is therefore a local service that will disappear, in the district of little Venice in Colmar. The customers came from Alsace, but also from the four corners of France, as far as Marseille.