Leaning over the window, Anne zyeute a pair of ballerinas. “I’ve wanted orange ballet flats for a long time to match a specific outfit”, explains the young Strasbourg retiree, who spotted the pair at the start of the sales on June 22. After four weeks of in-store discounts, the sales period ends on Tuesday, July 19. Anne waits until the very last moment to buy her ballerinas. “Often there is a second markdown and you still get -10%. It’s very important because my budget has fallen by half this year.”
The historic decline purchasing power des Français is on everyone’s lips in the city center of Strasbourg. “I think now they’re thinking about whether they have enough for gas, groceries, rent, bills…”explains Priscillia, sales assistant at Nice Things. “They ask themselves a lot of questions when they try the item on in front of the mirror: ‘Do I really have any use for it?’, ‘Do I already have something similar in my wardrobe? ‘”
No more “big sales”
“There is no more ‘I like therefore I buy’, it has become very rare”, confirms Anna who also works in a clothing store. She describes this year sales “catastrophic” with numbers even less good than those of last year. “After the Covid-19 it was already complicated, but now with everything that increases it is even more so. Customers have small pleasures but do not have big sales”, she argues. “So some customers will prefer to take cheaper pieces, unless it’s really a favorite. But at the moment, when everything is going up next door, people can’t keep up…”
And it is not only in Strasbourg that the summer sales have been weighed down this year. In Colmar, according to the trade association Les Vitrines de Colmar, professionals have recorded a 20% drop in turnover sales compared to 2021. Up to 14% decrease also compared to the last normal year, in 2019.
Reinvent sales
The president of this association goes as far as call into question the balance system. “I think they could regain meaning if they were moved at the end of the summer and winter seasons”explains Céline Kern-Borni. “It could give a little boost to find this idea of bargain, the customer will say to himself that it’s the super-end of the season, that it’s sold off because the merchant does not want to put it back in his boxes for next year, and that’s a great deal.”
“Afterwards if really, by doing that, we realize that it still doesn’t make sense, maybe we just have to reinvent the sales. It may not be called sales anymore, it won’t work maybe not the same…”assumes the trader. “But in any case, we see that not only do the sales no longer move people either to towns or to stores, but also that when customers are in stores, they consume less from year to year. At some point given, the market is still saying that our concept is outdated.”