Top start for the 2025 winter sales. Questions about the enthusiasm generated by the period in a context of economic and political uncertainty are leaving retail players in suspense.
To get this year 2025 off to a good start, the winter sales start on January 8, raising a lot of questions about the popularity of this promotional period. According to a survey carried out by the SDI, a union which represents 25,000 very small businesses in France, including many traders, 58% of smallest traders say they are worried of the repercussions of the political crisis on their activity.
An unfavorable context
Black Friday, second hand, private sales, ultra fast fashion sites… Consumers today are offered low-cost fashion items all year round. The perception of price is therefore different, which seems to lead to a rationalization of consumer behavior.
Speaking to AFP, Gildas Minvielle, director of the IFM Economic Observatory, specifies that in this context, consumers buy when necessary and “no longer give in to the impulse purchase, which almost seems to be a notion of the past.” This means, according to him, that customers do not anticipate “crazy things during the sales”.
In addition, the winter sales, which will end on February 4, could suffer from the political context. The absence of a 2025 budget fuels household uncertainty, but clothing is an item of expenditure that “is not the priority of consumers when there is an unfavorable, unstable economic environment, with very little visibility”underlines the expert.
More optimistic federations
The federations want to be more optimistic. “We are not dealing with amounts as high as when we buy a sofa or a house”. Buying clothing is “still less engaging” for the consumer, therefore the fashion sector is less exposed to “political upheavals”explains to AFP Yohann Petiot, director of the Commerce Alliance, who nevertheless recognizes a “climate which remains extremely fragile”.
For Laure Brunet-Ruinart de Brimont, general delegate of the Confederation of French Traders (CDF), which brings together 23 federations of independent businesses, traders can be optimistic. Indeed, the slowdown in inflation could stimulate consumption. In the fashion sector in particular, prices increased by only 1% in 2024, compared to 3% in 2023 and 6% in 2022, according to the Economic Observatory of the French Fashion Institute (IFM). “Today the worst is behind us, believes Yohann Petiot. Inflation has fallen, taxes on electricity will be reduced, so there is a little more room for maneuver for consumers to enjoy themselves.”
Postpone the period?
If the sales are far from having become obsolete for Yann Rivoallan, president of the women’s ready-to-wear federation, who affirms that there is always a “strong expectation” traders, he had declared that they wanted the promotional period to start at the end of winter. Judging this date too close to Christmas, “financially burdensome for households”and too premature to destock, the CDF also called in a press release to “postpone the start of winter sales to the last Wednesday in January to preserve the attractiveness of commerce.
Source: www.ecommercemag.fr
