Auchan, Gifi, Zara … Explosion of store closings in France: the figures that turn the head
Increase in store closures in France in 2025: traditional trade in full debacle © Shutershock
The French retail trade is currently undergoing a large -scale purge. The rise of online trade, the pressure on prices dictated by Asian platforms Draaringly aggressive, and the persistence of several head inflation has redesigned the rules of the game. Result: even the most solidly established actors are forced to reduce the wing.
Disgust, anger, surprise in the face of the scale of the ads
2025, the year when everything changes for major French brands?
The fashion sector, the first affected, is now like a battlefield. After the disappearance of Camaïeu, Kookai or Burton, it is now Zara who announces closures targeted in France (Saint-Nazaire, Valence, Angoulême). C&A, for its part, will draw the curtain in 24 stores and 57 corners in supermarkets. A restructuring deemed necessary, but which will cost more than 300 positions.
The house and decoration sector is not to be outdone. After Habitat, Casa entered receivership in March 2025, jeopardizing 143 stores and 600 jobs. Gifi, formerly king of decoration at a low price, also begins to fold: 11 closures already acted, and up to 100 envisaged by 2027.
Any commercial operation is to date impossible for 30 stores bringing together nearly 680 employees
Signs concerned by recent or future closures:
- Zara: 3 stores closed in 2025 (Angoulême, Saint-Nazaire, Valence)
- C&A: 24 shops + 57 closed corners, more than 300 threatened jobs
- Casa: receivership, 143 stores concerned
- Gifi: 11 immediate closures, up to 100 planned by 2027
- Intermarché: 30 former casino stores deemed not profitable
- Auchan: wave of transfers and restructuring by 2027
Large distribution, long spared, is now caught up. Intermarché is preparing the closure of around thirty ex-casino stores, while AUCHAN revises all its historic model. Some hypermarkets could well transform into miniature supermarkets or simply disappear. Even cooperatives like a U system hastened to recover the pieces.
The recomposition of the commercial landscape is therefore very real, and it is just beginning. The brands that will succeed in surviving will not necessarily be the oldest, but the most agile. In this race against the void, the square meters become a debt, and the proximity, a strategy.
What about French tech stores?
In 2025, French tech brands did not collapse: they adjust. Baker, Fnac-Darty Or LDLC do not multiply the closures, but rationalize their park, by targeting the sites with low profitability or poorly positioned. Boulanger thus closed his Strasbourg-Center store in early February, while Fnac left the Champs-Élysées in January. No major social breakage: employees have been reclassified.
This redeployment is based on strategic refocusing. Baker targets 250 points of sale by 2027 (against 214 today), with a rise in power of the franchised model. Fnac-Darty continues the densification of its services (Darty Max subscription, repairability, installation) and strengthens its omnichannel logistics.
Fnac des Champs-Élysées definitively closed on January 3, 2025 © Shutershock
It is a substantive evolution: the physical store is no longer the heart of the model, but a relay, a hub, a point of contact. The average surface decreases, the stock fluidifies, proximity becomes logistical. What matters is no longer the linear, but the integrated experience.
The trend remains favorable economically: Fnac-Darty released 140 million euros in net income in 2023, Boulanger displays modest but regular growth. But in small territories, the scarcity of physical supply becomes tangible. The model holds, but it refocuses. And it leaves white areas.
