Court hearing on bids for French brand Naf Naf postponed to June 4

The employees of French fashion retailer Naf Naf are still in no man’s land. A hearing to examine the three bids to acquire the company was scheduled on May 28, but the trade court in Bobigny, France, has decided to push back the date to June 4. Turkish company Migiboy Tekstil, which is proposing to buy Naf Naf outright, is in fact yet to provide detailed figures for its offer, notably in terms of number of stores and employees involved, and of the overall investment. Migiboy Tekstil, a company with approximately 750 employees, owned by the Canpolat family, has until midnight on May 30 to substantiate its bid.

The two other acquisition bids filed with the court are only partial. The first has been made by GD Distribution (representing the Gérard Darel brand), which intends to buy just one store, while the second bid, by Chloé Distribution, relates to two stores. According to information provided by Naf Naf’s management to the AFP agency in April, the brand currently has 111 directly owned stores, and 59 franchised ones.

Naf Naf was founded by the Pariente brothers in 1973, and was owned for a long time by French group Vivarte, until it was sold to Chinese group La Chapelle in 2018. Two years later, Naf Naf went into judicial receivership, and was sold to Franco-Turkish group SY International. The latter wasn’t able to prevent the company from going into receivership again in September 2023, prompting the latest call for tenders.

In recent months, Naf Naf’s current management floated the idea of drawing up an internally run turnaround plan, but according to Sud newspaper this is no longer on the cards. The unions have called on Naf Naf’s 670 or so employees to mobilise on Saturday June 1 in order to draw attention to the company’s plight, by half-closing the blinds on the shop windows.