Five months after the judicial liquidation of its stores, the furniture and decoration brand has developed a strategy for reconquest. This will start by compensating customers who were not delivered after the liquidation last December.
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As of December 2023, 8,800 customers were left behind with orders that had not been fulfilled. The furniture and decoration merchant Habitat found itself placed in compulsory liquidation by the Bobigny court, due to serious financial difficulties. And December 28, 2023 put an end to the activities of the brand, born in 1964, and its twenty stores in France. The 400 employees were immediately dismissed.
Online Renaissance
But Habitat will see the light of day again thanks to the Cafom group (French Purchasing Center for Overseas). Cafom, and its subsidiary vente-unique.com, is what we call a “pure player”, a furniture merchant only on the internet. In 2020, after selling the operation of its Habitat stores to French entrepreneur Thierry Le Guénic, Cafom remained the owner of the brand. Today, he is reactivating the brand on the basis of a strictly digital economic model.
The idea is to win back old customers, restore their confidence, before attracting new ones. The Habitat website has been reactivated since Tuesday April 23, to allow former cheated customers to declare their loss. Once they are identified, vouchers will be given to them so that they can recover their initial investment. Cafom holds the stock remaining after the liquidation, the equivalent of some 12 million euros.
More designer products
Initially, no new products are offered for sale and the site only offers a home and information page. We simply renew contact. Ultimately, in the coming months, the objective will be to offer more modern products than what Habitat offered until the closure of its stores, with calls for new designers in particular. Everything should be finalized in September.
Will we one day see Habitat stores again in France? In the longer term perhaps. But abroad, the brand owner could reopen physical stores relatively quickly.