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Philippe Ginestet, founding president of GiFi: “We didn’t want everything to fall apart …”

the essential
The founding president of Gifi, Philippe Ginestet, received us Thursday morning at his home in Pujols where he has been confined for fifty days. He told us about the crisis, his recovery plan and many other topics. Interview.

How did the GiFi group react to the arrival of the epidemic, to the containment measures taken by the government, which required the closure of all your stores?

Philippe Ginestet_ It was a bit complicated for me, especially since I had just returned from a convalescent moment when I had to stop. I was stopped in Paris. I had this absence at the start of the year and I had already had a lot of trips at the end of the year. In six months, I had spent a weekend at home. Three days after returning to business, this event occurs. From Saturday and Sunday we met to see how we were going to organize, because it was a completely new situation for us, even if we used to be proactive and we try to imagine any situation.

Did that one escape you?

We didn’t really plan it. There was a time when we thought about a pandemic, four or five years ago, since we included it in our insurance contracts. However, in the organization, we did not return immediately. So you can imagine how it goes during the closings, when the chopper suddenly falls. We didn’t want everything to fall apart and the first idea that worried me then was above all to be able to save the collaborators; that is, how to secure wages. Then the second question that arises, is how to pay suppliers without revenue? And finally, how do we manage the goods arriving and on order, as well as the stocks?

How did you do it then?

We still have some equity that allowed us to secure the salaries for the month of April. Then the government made promises and we can say that, for us, it kept them. It’s only a one year loan, but this loan suits us well. Especially than for us, April is the month when we spend the most. Goods shipped at the end of the year, that’s when you pay for them.

Have you estimated the losses?

We lost 200 million euros, including 130 million for stocks, the rest is the margin to pay rents, salaries, etc.

Have you used short-time working?

Yes. All the staff were partially unemployed in the shops. They just resumed this week. We had to put everything back on the road nicely, put the products on the shelves, because next week, they are going to have a very big week because we are going to need our customers. We will have to dare to tell them: “we need you”. Because we were arrested for two months, we have our depots full of goods and we have other goods arriving. There are some of these “overstocks” that we are forced to sell quickly. I can tell you that we are happy to find our customers. We’ll prove it to them.

How do you want to get your customers back?

By doing 50% on the whole store. There is no longer any question of calculating a profitability to continue opening stores. We think differently to save the business. From Monday, we open the stores and from Monday we will make 50% in all the stores. We will do this in the form of purchase vouchers, you will be entitled to 50% discount vouchers on what you buy when you return the month after. Because we need them to come back. We will communicate a lot about this because we have no time to waste. On the other hand, we must also ensure the serenity of our customers. There were a lot of exchanges. Customers may or may not wear a mask, we advise them to wear one, but our employees will wear one. We have equipped our stores, and in particular the boxes, with protection. There will also be a person to manage the flow of customers in front of the stores, but we are lucky to have beautiful airy surfaces.

Safety is paramount?

We tried to put ourselves in the customers’ shoes. There is someone who will be very happy to be able to regain a certain freedom and to be able to have fun in a store and who may be less careful. There is also one who will want to be careful. We have to make the two get along.

Do you think consumption will resume soon enough?

I believe it. I even think that we will have a very good end of the year. What has just happened, the fact that we cannot move, we will remember and say to ourselves “as long as we can enjoy it, let’s have fun”. In our stores, this is the place to have fun. When they come to GiFi, 50% of our customers have a goal and the other 50% they don’t know why they come. And yet at the exit of the store, they have their arms full. These are pleasure stores at low prices. When we continue to put products at one, two or three euros at the entrance, it proves that the stores have evolved well in 40 years, since the first in Villeneuve-sur-Lot.

You say you want to protect your employees, socially, this crisis will not cause breakage, job losses?

Not only will I keep them all in the stores but as I tell you that I believe in our stores, I even hope that we can create other jobs. There will still be teleworking for some and still partial unemployment at first, for the restart, but no job loss. On GiFi we have more than 6,000 employees and more than 9,000 in the group.

What is your last big project?

My goal remains the same. I had set myself it for 2027 and I think I would reach it before, it is 1,000 stores and 10,000 employees of all brands of course. I believe in my activity. Whether with the GiFi stores or with the Trafic stores in Belgium, or with the Besson stores, we are well in the heart of the business of what our customers will soon expect. Quality products at low prices!

And for Tati, how did it end?

We saved a large part of the collaborators, but we abandoned the brand. That means roughly a hundred stores, 50 are under the GiFi brand, 50 have been sold with employees to a buyer who creates a new brand called Klo. She will specialize in batches. It’s a bit like the beginnings of GiFi. I am convinced that the buyer will succeed. I’m still proud to have saved 1,000 Tati employees. When I took over Tati, I was aware that it was more of an investment for our group rather than seeking profitability. I did it too because it was the opportunity at the end of my career to save 1,000 jobs. And then there is the emotional side. When I was younger and passed by Tati in Paris with my truck. I said to myself “how strong is the man”. It was an opportunity to save his collaborators.

“We came back to buy in Europe”

Beyond the short and medium term, what just happened, does it invite you to think of trade differently for the future?

Philippe Ginestet_ The questions, we asked ourselves. When I opened my first store, it was to offer the best prices to customers, by buying lots. Then I tried to avoid intermediaries, buying directly from the factories. At the wheel of my truck, in the 1980s, I avoided the highways to try to discover the factories in France, but it was already the bad time because they were starting to disappear. I started going to Spain, Italy, Portugal. This is how I started to import. And I realized that a lot of packages actually came from Asia. One day I went there in Hong Kong. I neither spoke English, let alone Chinese. I found a translator there. We started doing a fair and tradings and he became my first collaborator in Asia. I was obsessed with my desire to avoid intermediaries, but I so wish it had happened in France. It was no longer possible. We had a push towards Asia with, at one point, 70% of products. And four or five years ago, we reorganized. I said to my colleagues: “We have to think of Europe. Tomorrow we will get good prices, if only because of the proximity.” Today, we have returned to just over 50% of products purchased directly in Asia. My dream would be to help recreate factories in France or in Europe to buy products from them. A few years ago, I created a factory in Villeneuve-sur-Lot which was called “Usimeuble”. We used to make small extra furniture that was already a bit bulky and expensive to import. I wanted to relocate and then the factory only lasted three or four years because it was more complicated for me to work with my own factory than to go and buy this furniture in Spain. Young entrepreneurs should be encouraged by reducing the charges. We are talking about relocation. There are different ways to make things happen, but I don’t want to get into political considerations, I am above all a trader.

“The heart of GiFi

stay in Villeneuve! “

Philippe Ginestet explains why he is not ready to leave the Villeneuvois where GiFi employs around 800 people.

“The heart of GiFi is in Villeneuve-sur-Lot. I am an autodidact. I open my first store there with a first employee, then I need a secretary, who I install in a garage in Pujols And then after, I open 5, 6, 10 stores, because collaborators ask me to open other stores. When we were 30, every lunchtime we ate together, because I like the proximity. you are 50, 60, you want to celebrate New Year’s Eve with your teams in La Mongie. And then there are seminars at Castelnaud golf, trips to Morocco … You have this proximity that is created. you attach to your employees. The first dashboards arrive and I realize that being in Villeneuve costs me a point and a half of my turnover. But how to abandon your employees? I’m not a financier, I I don’t want to give it up. The energy your co-workers send you back rators, it’s so much stronger than a point and a half of profitability. I would say thank you until the last day, they gave me back so much love that I gave them. “


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