Since January 12, the sales have started. Last year, the winter sales were postponed for two weeks due to the health situation. This year they are maintained, but it does not happen as traders hoped. Between the fifth wave of Covid-19, the Omicron variant and the return of anti-sanitary pass demonstrations every Saturday in the Ecusson; most traders wonder how they will hold up.
This is the case of the owner of the Daniel Angel clothing store near rue de la Loge. She has been running her store for six years and this is the first season that she has offered her discounted products. The creator of the 100% local brand is distraught over the situation, “It’s catastrophic, there are not many people”. She doesn’t know what to do anymore, “there was confinement so there was state support, today we are told: open”.
“The streets are empty”
Not far from there, Léa, saleswoman in the Faguo shoe store, remains optimistic despite everything. “Looks like nothing, we’re not doing too badly because in the end, the few customers we have buy a little more”. In his store every Saturday it’s the same thing : “either people come to take refuge in the store so as not to find themselves in the demonstration or no one in fact”.
For Laurence, manager of the clothing store Many Store, it’s very complicated “Since this morning I must have had two customers who entered the store”. She is only halfway through the sales, which end on February 8, but she said she has already lost 20% of its usual attendance. The absence of customers because of the demonstrations, she understands:“You don’t necessarily want to find yourself in groups during a pandemic, it can scare people away from coming to Montpellier”.