Fnac on the Champs-Elysées opens for 15 minutes, then closes until January 6, 2025

At midday, in front of a queue that continued to lengthen under a cold winter sun, the store’s managers finally announced that it would remain closed all day and would not reopen until Monday. “For the safety of goods and people, the store will remain closed all day. It will be open Monday. Please disperse,” shouted a manager in front of a line that stretched for nearly 200 meters, to the boos of disappointed customers.

On the employee side, the unions are requesting a meeting of the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) on Monday “to ask management under what conditions they intend to reopen” the store, CSE secretary Sébastien Boury of the CGT told AFP. Questioned by AFP, the Fnac-Darty group indicated in the morning that a crowd movement had led the store “to temporarily lower the curtain to regulate flows”, before subsequently confirming the closure of the store until ‘See you Monday.

Sale. “I’ve been here since 8:45 a.m., they can sell off 50 to 70%,” Karim told AFP. “I come for electronics, it seems that there can be sales of 30 to 80%,” explained Kevin, who came from Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis). Fnac on the Champs-Elysées had announced that it was going to sell off its stocks until January 12 before closing permanently. Last March, the Fnac Darty group indicated that this store, “heavily loss-making”, would close its doors, without impact on employment.

“The plan to close the store at the end of this year 2024 is the only economically reasonable and socially responsible decision,” said the group, specifying that the 101 employees of the store would be offered “a position offer identical to the one occupied, under the same salary conditions, within another Fnac store in Paris”, citing the stores in Ternes, Saint-Lazare, Forum des Halles, Montparnasse and Beaugrenelle.

According to Fnac-Darty, the store located at 74, avenue des Champs-Elysées was confronted with “multiple difficulties”, notably the “generalized increase in fixed charges”, starting with the rent, and a drop in sales “from fact of a decreasing use of the neighborhood by the brand’s natural clientele. The group considered the outlook “unfavourable”, with “the increasingly marked orientation of the avenue towards luxury retail and international customers”.

© Agence France-Presse