The French women’s fashion label Naf Naf, which has been under insolvency administration since September, will close 17 stores in France as part of a new social plan. France’s largest trade union federation CFDT told the AFP news agency yesterday that 87 jobs in the branches and 30 in the headquarters would be lost.
This decision was taken during a meeting of the French Social and Economic Committee (Comité Social et Economique, CSE) on Wednesday and affects stores in Mulhouse, Bordeaux, Saint-Omer, Brest, Marseille, Niort, Levallois, Nancy, Paris, Nice, Aix -en-Provence, Lille, Toulouse, Tours and Boulogne. All branches are scheduled to close around November 10th. Exceptions to this are the store in Nice, which is scheduled to close at the end of January 2024, and the Naf Naf branch in Boulogne, which will not follow until March 2024.
In addition, the headquarters are to be relocated from Asnières, southwest of Paris, to Bondy in the east of the metropolis in mid-November. The social plan has been opened to headquarters employees who do not want to change jobs, said Angélique Idali, secretary of the CSE and union delegate of the CFDT, which has an 87 percent majority at Naf Naf.
More than 150 jobs cut at Naf Naf
The trade unionist fears that the number of 30 threatened jobs at the headquarters could increase. “Some employees have been with the company for over 25 years, this is a shock for them,” she told AFP. “More than 150 jobs are to be cut in the company within four months,” she regretted.
The brand was placed under judicial supervision by the commercial court in Bobigny (Seine-Saint-Denis) in September because it was in debt, in particular due to unpaid rent during the Covid crisis. As is usual in such proceedings, she was given a six-month observation period.
Another hearing is scheduled for November 7, which will allow the court to “take stock of the company’s situation, particularly its financial situation,” Idali said.
Naf Naf is a French brand that is in the mid-price segment. It was founded in 1973 by two brothers and is now owned by the French-Turkish group SY International. Before the new social plan, it employed 660 people in France, owned 135 stores and reported sales of 141 million euros for 2022, which were “growing,” a spokesman told AFP at the end of August.