Too many people for the clearance sale at Fnac on the Champs-Élysées: the store closes its doors 15 minutes after opening and until Monday

Before its final closure, the Fnac store on the Champs-Élysée began a destocking sale this Friday, January 3, 2025. Faced with the crowd of customers waiting in the cold, it had to close prematurely and until Monday.

There were several hundred on Friday who wanted to take advantage of the liquidation of stocks at the Fnac on the Champs-Élysées in Paris, which will definitively close in mid-January, but due to the crowds, the store had to close its doors until Monday.

The store opened for 15 minutes around 10 a.m. Friday before letting customers out and closing its gate, several people at the scene told an AFP reporter.

< p>At midday, faced with a queue that continued to grow under a cold winter sun, the store's managers finally announced that it would remain closed all day and would only reopen Monday.

A question of security

“For the safety of property and people, the store will remain closed all day. It will be open on Monday. Please disperse.”, shouted a manager in front of a line that stretched for nearly 200 meters, to the jeers of disappointed customers.

On the employee side, the unions are requesting a meeting of the Social and Economic Committee (CSE) on Monday “to ask management under what conditions they plan to reopen” the store, CSE secretary Sébastien Boury, from the CGT, told AFP.

Questioned by AFP, the group had indicated in the morning that a crowd movement had led the store “to temporarily lower the shutter to regulate the flow” , before confirming in a second phase the closure of the store until Monday.

“I've been here since 8:45 a.m., they can sell off 50 to 70% off”, Karim told AFP. “I'm here for electronics, apparently there can be sales of 30 to 80% off”, explained Kevin, who came from Stains (Seine-Saint-Denis).

Permanent closure

The Fnac on the Champs-Élysées had announced that it would sell off its stock until January 12 before closing permanently. Last March, the Fnac Darty group had indicated that this store, “heavily loss-making”, would close its doors, without impact on employment.

“The plan to close the store at the end of 2024 is the only economically reasonable and socially responsible decision”, said the group, specifying that the store's 101 employees would be offered “a job offer identical to the one held, under the same salary conditions, in another Fnac store in Paris”, citing the stores in Ternes, Saint-Lazare, Forum des Halles, Montparnasse and Beaugrenelle.

According to Fnac Darty, the store located at 74 avenue des Champs-Elysées was faced with “multiple difficulties”, including the “generalized increase in fixed costs”, starting with rent, and a drop in sales “due to a decrease in the number of customers in the area”.

The group considered the outlook “unfavorable”, with “the increasingly marked orientation of the avenue towards luxury retail and international clientele”.