Esprit placed in compulsory liquidation in France

The ready-to-wear brand Esprit has been placed in compulsory liquidation in France, according to a court ruling seen by AFP on Thursday, four months after the group announced that it had filed for bankruptcy for its European activities.

The Commercial Court of Nanterre (Hauts-de-Seine) ruled on September 9, in a decision obtained by AFP, that “the business can no longer be continued and (…) there is no possibility of presenting a recovery plan to pay off the liabilities.” Esprit de Corp France, based in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), was placed in receivership on July 18.

At the end of the last financial year, the company employed 145 people in France and had annual sales of nearly €32 million, according to the decision to place the company in receivership in July. At the time, the brand was present in more than a hundred sales outlets in France, according to its website, which was consulted in July. According to FashionNetwork.com, 90 of these were run by franchisees, and the branches had already been closed for several weeks.

The group, based in Germany, is listed on the Hong Kong stock exchange, where it also has a head office. It also has a head office in New York, where its creative teams have been relocated. It announced in May that it had filed for bankruptcy for its European operations, counting on restructuring to overcome its difficulties, linked in particular to rising costs and the after-effects of the Covid-19 pandemic. Esprit Europe and six other German companies were involved in the filing for bankruptcy. The subsidiaries in Switzerland and Belgium, where Esprit also has shops, filed for bankruptcy in March and April.

Since then, its brand rights in Europe have been acquired by the British investment group Alteri for an undisclosed sum.

The clothing brand was founded in 1968 in San Francisco by an American hippy couple, Douglas and Susie Tompkins – also behind the brand The North Face – who sold their first items criss-crossing 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 European headquarters are in Ratingen, near Düsseldorf in western Germany. Esprit claims to be present in over 40 countries with 586 shops.

With AFP