Douglas Will Close 103 Stores in Spain and Cut Around 600 Workers

Douglas Will Close 103 Stores in Spain and Cut Around 600 Workers.

PERFUME chain Douglas announced on Thursday, January 28 that they are looking at a restructuring plan that will mean the closure of 500 of its 2,400 stores in Europe to focus on the online business – 103 establishments will be affected in Spain – which will entail the presentation of an Employment Regulation File (ERE) affecting a maximum of 600 employees, as reported by the company in a statement.

The company, which already presented another ERE in 2018, has already notified workers’ representatives of the decision and the consultation period is expected to begin in the third week of February.

With the purchase of Perfumerías If and Bodybell in recent years, Douglas’s distribution network in the Spanish market now exceeded 380 establishments.

Douglas has indicated that it approaches this process from the “utmost respect to all workers” and with the desire to reach the best solution for all parties, insisting that the decision comes as part of its digitisation process and responds to the change in habits of the consumer that has been taking place in Europe in recent years – taking into consideration the COVID pandemic – which has strongly promoted the growth of the company’s online commerce.

The company points out that it has experienced a record of online sales in the 2019/2020 financial year, with an increase of 40.6 per cent compared to the previous year, reaching €822 million. It is a change in consumer behaviour that began before the arrival of Covid-19, but was intensely accelerated by the pandemic, and that “necessarily implies this rapid adaptation” of the company’s commercial network.

Douglas said in the statement that “the reorganisation of the firm’s stores in Spain responds to a process of transformation of the company’s business that had begun before the pandemic.” In this same sense, the company insists that “the determination of the affected points of sale is based on the individual analysis of the situation of each of the stores, for which the data from the period prior to the appearance of the Covid have been taken into consideration.”

The group, which has a turnover of €3,800 million, intends to promote viable stores, “enhancing its offer and long-term appeal and guaranteeing its integration into the new digital platform of the firm.” Douglas is hoping that this process will allow the company to make the necessary investments “to continue the company’s long-term growth trajectory as the leading beauty platform in Europe.”

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