“The activity can no longer be continued”: the ready-to-wear brand Esprit in compulsory liquidation

The ready-to-wear brand Esprit has been placed in receivership in France, according to a decision justice consulted Thursday by AFP, four months after the group announced that it had filed for bankruptcy for its activities in Europe.

“The activity can no longer be continued and (…) there is no possibility of presenting a recovery plan to clear the liabilities”, the Nanterre Commercial Court (Hauts-de-Seine) considered in its decision of September 9, which AFP obtained.

Esprit de Corp France, based in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), had been placed in receivership on July 18. “As of the closing date of the last financial year”,The company employed 145 employees in France and its annual turnover amounted to nearly 32 million euros, according to the July receivership decision.

A hundred points of sale in France

The brand was then present in more than a hundred points of sale in France, according to its website consulted in July.

The group, based in Germany and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announced in May that it had filed for bankruptcy for its activities in Europe, counting on a restructuring to overcome its difficulties, linked in particular to the increase in its costs and to aftermath of the Covid-19 pandemic.

The bankruptcy filing concerns the subsidiary Esprit Europe and six other German companies in the group. The subsidiaries in Switzerland and Belgium, where Esprit also has stores, had filed for bankruptcy in March and April.

This clothing brand was founded in 1968 in San Francisco by an American hippie couple, Douglas and Susie Tompkins – also behind the brand The North Face -, who sold their first items while crisscrossing California in a Volkswagen minibus.

The founders have not been at the helm for a long time. The group has been listed since 1993. Its headquarters are located in Germany in Ratingen, near Düsseldorf (west of the country). Esprit says it is present in more than 40 countries with 586 stores.