In Nîmes, the start of summer sales between expectation and confidence

Dans sa boutique, Muriel propose exclusivement des modèles de créateurs. Midi Libre – Xavier Rousseau

Les soldes d’été ont débuté ce mercredi 26 juin pour un mois. À Nîmes, les premières heures de la matinée ont plutôt été calmes.

“Covid has marked a turning point for retailers, especially those specializing in ready-to-wear. Since the pandemic, people have gotten used to buying online. We are experiencing a real crisis, because people no longer want to go shopping.” Set up for a few months on rue de la Trésorerie (after six years on rue de l’Aspic), Muriel offers women's ready-to-wear clothing, exclusively designed, in her boutique Les voyages de Victoria.

Wednesday June 26, on this first morning of the summer sales, which will continue until July 26, the Nîmes retailer was waiting for her first customers. "With chain stores offering discounts and promotions all year round, while real sales correspond to a significant drop in prices. It's hard to understand how it works."

Need to preserve commerce in the city center

But Muriel, for whom this job is a "passion" nothing is worth buying in store. "Items are not more expensive than on the internet. In addition, we provide service and advice." And to send out a cry from the heart: "We need the clientele to exist. If she no longer frequents the shops downtown, they will disappear and it will be too late."

A little further away, at Pablo, another women's ready-to-wear boutique, rue du Chapter, Daniel Feltin considers this period as "a important commercial event". He says he is "confident and optimistic", even if he considers that with the municipal policy of pushing cars out of the city, " it becomes less accessible and the city center experiences a drop in attendance".

Changing customer behavior

Paradoxically, he recognizes that apart from his usual clientele, he sees the arrival of those from Arles and Montpellier, two cities equally affected by restrictions on access to centers- cities for cars. "We got used to it, because between seasonal variations and stock management – we order a year in advance –, we are constantly juggling."

A clientele which has also "changed its purchasing behavior under the influence of social networks and the internet. People are less driven, remarks Daniel Feltin, who has headed Pablo since 2016, a boutique founded in 1978. Even if the experience of the’ rsquo;purchasing between friends to have fun is still present."

Between two customers, at Pointures, the shoe boutique on rue de la Madeleine, we showed ourselves "rather satisfied with the start" balances. The beginnings perhaps of an attractive first weekend of sales.