San Marina puts the key under the door. The shoe brand, which has 163 stores and 680 employees in France, was placed on Monday February 20 in compulsory liquidation by the Marseille Commercial Court.
“No serious takeover project could be supported and the current leaders could not complete their reserve offer project for lack of investors”, explains the court, which announced the immediate cessation of activity in the face of ” to a situation that it is no longer possible to rectify and is worsening day by day”, in a decision that Agence France-Presse was able to consult.
After the liquidation of Camaïeu in September, the placement in receivership of Go Sport in January, followed by those of Gap France and Kookaï in February, the carnage continues for a ready-to-wear sector that has been damaged for several years. .
The hope of a rescue of San Marina, a brand created in 1981 in Marseille and specializing in women’s shoes and leather goods, had moved away at the beginning of February, when its two shareholders had abandoned their takeover offer, for lack of sufficient funding. . Stéphane Collaert, who had bought the brand from Vivarte at the beginning of 2020, and Laurent Portella had planned to take over just under a third of the 163 San Marina stores in France, by selling their majority share to attract other investors, in particular suppliers of the sign, but without succeeding.
Of the ten takeover offers then filed with the Marseille commercial court, only three had been supported on February 10, none of which met “the conditions of the law to be retained in receivership”, explained to the Agence France-Presse Bernard Bouquet, San Marina’s lawyer.
These offers did not save the jobs of some 650 employees of the group, according to Helmi Farhat, secretary of the Corporate Social Committee (CSE) and CGT representative of the employees. The judgment sets the deadline for the liquidator to file the list of declared claims at 12 months.
Saturday evening, the curtains of the stores were thus lowered for the last time, and the phone calls between employees multiplied in the face of this liquidation which had become inevitable. The “distress” was palpable, says Helmi Farhat, secretary of the Works Social Committee (CSE) and CGT representative of the employees. “It’s such a shock, we never found ourselves unemployed,” reacted Wednesday to Agence France-Presse a saleswoman from a store in Bouches-du-Rhône.
The hardest part, “it’s for older colleagues, who have thirty years in the box”: “When you see French brands closing, it’s scary. The Web, it killed us, and then bad management too, “she analyzed. On the merchant site, the brand specializing in women’s shoes and leather goods soberly tells customers that “a page turns” after “42 years”.
“It’s getting sad because there are several stores that have closed and maybe it will continue. Is it because people shop on the internet? Me, I want to see and touch before buying, “commented Wednesday, in front of a San Marina store in Marseille, Pierre Scopelliti, 67, a loyal customer of the brand.
