“The activity can no longer be continued and […] there is no possibility to present a recovery plan that would allow the debts to be extinguished,” the Nanterre Commercial Court ruled in its decision on September 9.
Esprit de Corp France, based in Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine), was placed on trial on July 18.
“At the close of the last financial year”, the company had 145 employees in France and an annual turnover of almost 32 million euros, we could read in the July judicial recovery decision. The brand was then present in over a hundred points of sale in France.
Based in Germany, listed in Hong Kong
The group, based in Germany and listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, announced in May that it had filed for bankruptcy for its European operations, banking on a restructuring to overcome its difficulties, particularly related to rising costs and the effects subsequent to the Covid 19 pandemic.
The bankruptcy filing concerns the Esprit Europe subsidiary and six other German companies in the group. Branches in Switzerland and Belgium, where Esprit also has stores, filed for bankruptcy in March and April.
This clothing brand was founded in 1968 in San Francisco by an American hippie couple, Douglas and Susie Tompkins – also at the origin of The North Face brand – who sold their first items traveling around California in a Volkswagen minibus.