Agnès Vigneron : “many foreign customers are back” – Echoes

What do you expect sales that begin this Wednesday ?

The balances remain a major event for our clients, even if it no longer generates the buzz it once for the first hour of opening. People take their time. It must be said that they came in tracking the previous days and that we organize for our best customers “before-first” since the 26th of December. But, during the first four days, the store traffic may double and reach 100,000 people per day. We offer good deals with discounts of the order of 50 % as soon as the first markdown. As the beginning of the winter has been very mild, there are still many beautiful pieces of clothing and have already notes that consumers take advantage of the balances to buy them.

Your sales of the end of the year have been satisfactory ?

Yes. September and October were difficult months because we’ve suffered the backlash of the attack of 14 July in Nice. The weather was also very soft, which does not lead to the purchase of winter clothing. But, from the beginning of the month of November, we have experienced a reboot in terms of sales and attendance. For our French customers have responded and, more importantly, we have seen the return of many foreign clients, which became more rare since the end of the year 2015 : the Japanese, the Indonesians, the Americans… so We ended the holiday period on sales growth of 10 % in average in the store. The basis of comparison 2016 was, it is true, very low, but we have done better in 2014. The trend is positive.

This year, the Galleries Lafayette Haussmann, will be open every Sunday. How was your first Sunday, the 8th of January ?

It was a time of strong symbolic significance for the store, which required several months of work on the part of teams. On the plan of the activity, it was a Sunday, ” like the others “, for which we have achieved our goals, with fewer visitors than one day of the week, but visitors who have come to buy. This first Sunday is encouraging for the future and makes us confident in achieving our ambition to generate 5 % to 8 % of annual turnover, additional. For us, the challenge was also to accommodate the 400 new members of staff recruited to date and test new procurement methods that we have developed. From this point of view, here, too, everything went well.

P. B., Les Echos