This is yet another blow for the French ready-to-wear sector. The Wilsam company, owner of the 20 franchise stores of the Gap France brand, has been placed in receivership, according to a judgment of the Grenoble Commercial Court made public on Wednesday March 1.
The court’s decision was taken “at the request of its leader Patrick Puy and in accordance with the requisitions of the prosecution”, said deputy prosecutor François Touret de Coucy in a press release. The court “appointed the same agents and judicial administrators” as for the Go Sport companies, which hold Gap France, “for the sake of economic consistency”, he specifies.
Wilsam’s declaration of cessation of payments was made on the basis of the financial analysis established by the Eight Advisory firm, the court noted in its judgment dated Wednesday. It “shows available assets of 378,856 euros and current liabilities of 26,292,594 euros”, a “negative difference” of almost 26 million euros, as well as other cash movements between Wilsam and the company MPI.
The end of the observation period was set for August 29.
The Gap France brand is owned by Bordeaux businessman Michel Ohayon, who made his fortune in real estate before buying retail brands such as Camaïeu, Go Sport, Gap France as well as around twenty Galeries stores. Lafayette out of Paris and has been in turmoil for weeks.
The elected staff of the ready-to-wear brand had exercised their right to alert at the end of January in order to obtain information on the situation of their company, bought in 2021 for one euro by the HPB group (Hermione, People
Last week, Gap France announced that it was “temporarily forced to stop e-commerce orders”. The CFDT had added that one of the Parisian stores of the sign, located avenue des Ternes in the 17th arrondissement of Paris, would close by the end of March.
An investigation for “organized gang fraud” within the company Go Sport, which owns Gap France, is also underway under the aegis of the National Jurisdiction for the Fight against Organized Crime (Junalco).
