In a difficult consumer environment and despite years of staff and business cuts, the shoe manufacturer André, which was acquired in January, is preparing a “future expansion phase”. This emerges from a court decision available to the AFP news agency.
Insolvency proceedings were opened for André in April 2025. According to the takeover offer, the reasons were a “sluggish” economy and “rising rental costs”. There were two interested buyers.
On the one hand, this was the French fashion group Beaumanoir from Brittany. She is the owner of Sarenza and has already taken over Naf Naf, Jennyfer and La Halle. On the other hand, it was the Belgian businessman Karim Redjal, who already owned André.
At the end of January, the Paris Commercial Court (TAE) ruled in favor of Redjal. He committed to taking on 43 employees, 33 of them with permanent contracts, as well as seven boutiques and two ‘corners’. This emerges from the decision that was available to AFP on Thursday.
The court considered that Redjal had presented a “bold and ambitious industrial challenge”. It praised his knowledge of the industry and his connection to the “brand he wants to modernize.”
Redjal “plans to focus on the most profitable retail spaces to increase their performance and prepare for a future expansion phase,” the judges explained.
The businessman also suggested “financing the activity from our own resources”. The TAE acknowledged that this “represents a new risk following already very high investments by Redjal.”
André once belonged to the former flagship of the French textile industry, Vivarte. In 2018, the company was initially taken over by the online sales platform Spartoo. This was followed in 2020, during insolvency proceedings, by the takeover by François Feijoo’s company 1Monde9. Feijoo was himself a former Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of the brand.
This more than halved the number of shops. Of the 180 sales outlets at the time, he only kept around 50 stores and 13 partner stores.
In 2023, the “shoemaker who knows how to make shoes” was taken over again after a second insolvency procedure. The Belgian company Optakare, headed by businessman Karim Redjal, had bet on the brand. 119 of 250 employment contracts and 21 of 50 boutiques were saved.
This article was created using digital tools translated.
FashionUnited uses artificial intelligence to speed up the translation of articles and improve the end result. They help us to make FashionUnited’s international reporting quickly and comprehensively accessible to a German-speaking readership. Articles translated using AI-based tools are proofread and carefully edited by our editors before they are published. If you have any questions or comments, please email [email protected]