“It’s like mourning. I feel like I’m losing a member of my family. It feels like a funeral”. Fernande Nogueira has strong words, at the height of her emotion. Saturday evening, at 8 p.m., she will lower the curtain of her Camaïeu store for the last time, located in the Casino de Chenôve shopping center. To never raise it, after 32 years of service in the ready-to-wear brand.
In all, 511 Camaïeu stores will close their doors, four days after the chain goes into liquidation. 2,600 employees will find themselves unemployed as of Sunday. Fernande Nogueira still does not believe it: “For the moment we don’t realize, we continue to do the work with a smile, but it’s very hard. I remember when I heard the news. I was here, in the store. My colleague told me called and we both cried. Then I announced it to the customers present at the time, who then applauded me”.
– Antoine Comte
Customers who, during these last days of opening, flock to Camaïeu shops to do their last shopping but also and above all as a gesture of solidarity with the vendors. “Here, we are lucky to have forged a real relationship with our clients. We have set up a notebook so that they can write down a word of sympathy for our team. It is already full, it means a lot to us” explains Fernande Nogueira, while her shop has been full since Thursday.
It’s hard to digest, we feel like we’re just pawns
For 11 years, the store manager has worked in Chenôve with Harmony Guillemard, who entered Camaïeu at the age of 20. For her too, the closure is harsh: “I grew up here. I was 20 at the time, I’m 37 now. And then spending 11 years in duet with the same person, it creates unbreakable bonds, she testifies. There I am in the reserve, I see photos of evenings, of unforgettable moments. We can’t sweep this away overnight.”
But behind sadness and nostalgia, anger is heard in Harmony Guillemard: “I think it’s been mishandled for two years and our last buyout. Despite everything, I believed in it until the end. But in the end, it’s more than 2,500 people on the floor, and thousands of families in precariousness, plague the thirty-something. It’s hard to digest, we feel like we’re just pawns”. In the Dijon agglomeration, a dozen people will thus find themselves unemployed.
– Antoine Comte
Small consolation: Wednesday, September 28, the Commercial Court of Lille had given three days to Camaïeu to sell its stocks. The money from these last sales will be paid in full to the employees of the group. One of the reasons that currently brings customers to Camaïeu. In Chenôve, Fernande and Harmony have understood this well: in front of the entrance, a sign. On it, a message: “Permanent closure of our store on Saturday evening. Thank you to all our customers”.