Dramatic declines in sales in the Corona areas
Geox will close eighty stores over the next three years, fifty of which will be in Europe. The Italian shoe brand announced this when presenting its annual figures.
Last year Geox suffered a loss of almost 25 million euros, compared to 5,3 million the year before. Sales fell by 2,6 percent to almost 806 million euros. Results were impacted by one-off costs, primarily related to the decision to phase out 80 unprofitable businesses starting this year. In addition to branches in Europe, this also includes locations in North America, Japan, Hong Kong, Macau and China. Geox will only operate two stores in the USA in the future.
Geox had 974 stores at the end of last year, 454 of which were its own. A year earlier there were 1015. The stores account for 55 percent of sales, the rest comes from wholesale. 72 percent of sales were achieved outside Italy.
After a good start to the new year, the coronavirus outbreak had a negative impact on business. In China and the Asia-Pacific region, sales fell from the end of January, and in Italy and to a lesser extent in the rest of Europe from the second half of February. Like-for-like sales in China were 50 percent below the previous year after nine weeks, while in Italy the sales decline in the ninth week was 44 percent.
