The sales started this Saturday August 1st. The results of this first day are gloomy. Customers are rare. The shops are as empty as a weekday. The late start of the sales, at the beginning of August instead of the beginning of July, and the recent stricter health rules have, it seems, cooled consumers.
At the SNI, the Neutral Union for Independents, where we have surveyed affiliates, we talk about disaster. “It’s a disaster for the stores, because the sales have never started so negatively as now”, says Christine Mattheeuws, President of the SNI. There are too few customers in the shops. According to the SNI, turnover in most cities is around 50% lower than last year, when the summer sales started.
The cause, for the SNI, is essentially the tightening of health measures decided by the National Security Council at the beginning of the week. The fact of only being able to stay in a store for 30 minutes and, above all, of only being allowed to enter a business alone, chills customers.
“With rare exceptions in certain neighborhoods or shopping centers, the merchant members of our federation are indeed reporting a particularly gloomy and disappointing day, very far from the crowds on which they were counting”, comments Daniel Cauwel, from SDI, another inter-professional employers’ federation.
Couples banned from doing sales together
This observation, Comeos, which also represents businesses, including most of the country’s large chain stores, also does. “It’s quite dramatic, our members are disappointed. It looks like a weekday without sales”, explains Déborah Motteux, the spokesperson for Comeos, who also points out the new sanitary rules. “Customers have to do their shopping alone. Often, they are in pairs and they are denied access. They do not go into the stores and we lose a lot of sales. It would be good if we could go shopping with it. our bubble “, explains Déborah Motteux.
Same criticism from the SNI which asks for an adaptation of health rules to facilitate access to shops and save the sales period. “The rules are too strict. In the Horeca, there is the possibility of going to eat with your bubble, but for businesses, shopping must be done alone. It is not very logical”, regrets Christine Mattheeuws and adds: “The sales, it is done with your partner, your child or girlfriends, you feel very strongly that not being able to do it is a brake”. The government needs to relax this rule, asks the SNI. Otherwise, 20% of stores will go bankrupt.
Already significant reductions
On the Comeos side, we also point to the late start of the sales. Initially, the sales were to start in early July. A majority of associations and federations defending traders (but not Comeos) had pleaded for this postponement. It was about leaving businesses that had sold little due to containment and closure of stores to liquidate stock without having to break prices too quickly. For Comeos, this postponement was a bad idea: “Postponing the sales to August was not a very good idea. In the Netherlands, in France, the sales were not moved.”, we explain at Comeos.
Since then, to sell as quickly as possible, liquidate stocks and generate cash, many traders seem ready to make concessions by giving large discounts at the start of the sales. Where, traditionally, discounts of 30% are practiced in the first week, it is not uncommon to already display discounts of more than 40%. “Once consumers go shopping, you have to take the opportunity to sell, because they may not come back”, explains Christine Mattheeuws, president of the SNI. She also recalls that traders do everything to ensure the health safety of customers in stores.
Request for additional government assistance
For the SNI, the government will have to find other avenues to help traders and prevent them from going bankrupt. Most traders still have a large stock. It is not certain that the balances will allow these inventories to be liquidated and generate sufficient cash to continue commercial activity. The SNI therefore asks the government to offer financial solutions. According to the SNI, the fiscal avenue could be explored by authorizing an increased deduction for unsold inventory.
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