Galeries Lafayette recovers from the pandemic. The French department store group closed the last financial year with a turnover of 3.6 billion euros, sales similar to that of 2019, recovering pre-pandemic levels and returning to profits four years later, as shared by Nicolas Houzé, general director of the group, in a presentation and has collected WWD.
The group has celebrated the return to profitability and has assured that it will invest 400 million euros in building improvements, such as the façade of its flagship in Parisin addition to significant investments in technology and omnichannel strategy over the next five years.
The manager pointed out that the Christmas shopping period exceeded the figures before the pandemic, sales that continued to accelerate in the first quarter of the year, which has made the group mark the objective of closing 2024 with a turnover of 3,850 million euros. The company also anticipates this growth due to the momentum of the Olympic Games and will invite 20 designers to supply exclusive products to the company’s stores during the sporting event.
Galeries Lafayette will invest €400 million in building improvements, technology and omnichannel over the next five years
Despite the results obtained, The company claims to have lost part of its Asian customer since the pandemic. As of 2019, around 33% of its clients were from China, while that number now stands at 20%. Furthermore, the group has highlighted that the current consumers from this market are individuals, instead of the groups that previously dominated these sales.
For its part, French clients have been increasing and now represent 40% of the group’s consumers. The other 40% are international tourists and other Asian nationalities, coming from markets such as South Korea, Japan and Thailand. The company points out that it has added new luxury brands to its portfolio in recent years, which has also served to boost business, as well as the change of image of some of its establishments.
The general director of Galeries Lafayette advanced the company’s commitment to artificial intelligence and noted that the company was incorporating some of its tools into various processes, such as customer service, the creation of product descriptions or the generation of images.
