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French Boardsports Market Insight April 2021

On March 16 2020, President of the Republic Emmanuel Macron took to the nation’s TV screens to announce a general lockdown (confinement) on the entire country. The whole of France took stock of the seriousness of the COVID-19 health crisis. A year on and 3 confinements later, COVID-19 is very much still circulating in France, as it is across the whole world. The COVID-19 epidemic has weighed heavily on French morale, disrupting day-to-day living in 2020 – a year punctuated by confinements and curfews. By Benoit Brecq

At the start of 2021 the situation was still concerning, despite hopes that the vaccines would provide a way out of the crisis. This was exactly what the government were counting on to try and tackle the epidemic. Despite delays at the outset, the national vaccination campaign now seems to be ramping up, the goal being to vaccinate the majority of the population by the summer and the government has stated its intention to further expand its vaccination campaign against coronavirus. The vaccines were first available to people aged over 70 before a more widespread approach from mid-April was scheduled. Despite all the social distancing measures and the rolling out of the vaccination campaign, the spread of the virus is accelerating in France this spring 2021. Since January, the curfew at 18:00 has been in force throughout the whole country to try and prevent a 3rd wave but because of new variants circulating, the situation has unfortunately worsened, forcing the government to put in place new confinement measures for the 3rd time but this time on a regionalised basis. At the time of writing, it’s the North, East and extreme South-East and the whole Paris area that are subject to these new measures. The confinement mark 3 is more relaxed when it comes to leaving your home and it is now localised and regionalised in order to limit people’s movement to 10km around the home with a ban on leaving your own department if it falls under these measures. All “non-essential shops” have again had to close their doors in these departments, accompanied by governmental aid in place (partial unemployment and compensation). Schools, however, remain open except for high schools, which must now cut student attendance numbers in half. The government are selling this measure as an educational concern but above all it allows parents to continue working, thereby avoiding millions of people going into partial unemployment to look after their kids.

It’s still too early to assess the effectiveness of these new measures but the 3rd wave seems to be breaking over the country this spring and the curves and indicators are relentlessly rising. The coming weeks will be critical in the battle against the virus in France and the head of state has already said he’ll be announcing new measures to be put in place in the coming days and weeks, with some scientists and epidemiologists talking about an inevitable total confinement in France…How will the boardsports market cope with this turmoil?

The winter season finished up in mid-March. A peculiar season; without ski lifts and in the midst of a sanitary crisis there was a lot of snow on all of France’s mountain ranges. Mountain professionals have seen mixed results. The season could have been excellent this year: the snow was good in contrast to last year. But in these circumstances, the government chose to forbid ski lifts to open. Holidaymakers, deprived of alpine skiing took to other activities, which was not enough to save the season. Christophe in the shop Algoud Sport at the Col du Rousset: “We are looking at just 30% of the turnover we could have had in normal times”, he laments. Such income only provided money to pay the charges and employees. To save the season, Algoud Sport relied on nordic activities rather than alpine skiing: “We adapted, there were big successes in cross country skiing, nordic ski touring especially, and snowshoeing, there were some days where we had no more cross-country skis or snowshoes left”, says Christophe.

It was the same story at Neway in Nantes, a multisport shop opened in 1995 that has a wonderful winter sports section. Rémi Harnois confides that: “The winter was difficult for this section with very little in the way of equipment or technical clothing sales this year.” He adds: “It’s an important section for the shop in this period and the circumstances led to a large drop in turnover. We now find ourselves with quite a lot of stock.”

But one person’s misery can be another person’s delight. The whole coastline seems to have benefited from the ski lifts being closed this year. From Waimea in Anglet, the oldest surf shop in Europe (1976), Xabi Anton tells us that: “We’ve had a really good winter”. He explains: “People preferred to come to the coast, no trips abroad, remote working, people came to live on the coast and we had really high visitation numbers.” He adds: “As soon as you shut people off from things, they tend to consume, taking solace in things that are allowed to do like surfing!”.

The same effect was noticeable at The Farm in Hossegor where Olivier Cuissot and his associate Alain Riou confide that: “We had our springtime in the winter, the population swelled, notably with people coming to lock themselves down in Landes, remote workers or seasonnaires from ski resorts who weren’t all able to work.” He adds: “Although the Easter holidays are known for knockdown sidewalk sales in Hossegor, this will not be the case this year. However, we are up by 75-100% turnover per month this winter.” He explains: “The portion of leisure/culture/restaurant budget has been invested into purchases or updating equipment.”

The same was felt further north Nova Funa in La Tranche sur mer where Pascal Boutin says: “The COVID effect was rather positive in visitations as well as sales, the open-air side of things was a safe haven during this time.” At Neway in Nantes, Rémi adds: “We saw higher demand in equipment compared to previous years, especially Surfing and SUP but also skate and surf skates.” However, he does state that: “We missed out on quite a lot of sales because of a lack of stock at quite a few suppliers, particularly in neoprene.” At ATS in Plouharnel in Brittany, shop manager Xavier Auffray also states that “the coast has abnormally benefitted all winter from an influx of holidaymakers who normally head to ski resorts. So there has been a livelier winter period than normal on the coast,” before adding: “The neoprene section was literally emptied.”

Everyone agrees that the challenge of the 2021 season to come will be stock and supply. Xavier from ATS explains: “the problems with supplies are many, whether it’s at a production level to meet the strong demand or at a logistical one with shortages of containers and delivery times getting longer!” At Nova Fun and most shops we are already seeing delivery delays, especially technical equipment Pascal tells us. Rémi from Neway adds: “With more foreseeable consumer demand compared to previous years, expectations on their part are even higher!” It’s the same for Waimea, Xabi telling us that: “Deliveries are having trouble arriving, delay after delay, we are lacking merchandise because the demand was strong this winter, we are running very last minute.” At The Farm, Olivier confirms: “Overall we have tried to anticipate as best we can but the situation seems to be straining more and more. The lack of blanks and boards will quickly have an effect on June’s restocks: the summer season will be tricky in terms of stock!”

If we are to assess the situation, it was mostly technical equipment that saw strong demand this summer: surfboards, neoprene, skateboards, symbols of the open-air and freedom seem to have made the most out of this epidemic. The winter has therefore been pretty positive for the coastal and flatland shops and the challenge for the season ahead seems to be stock and supply.

While the threat of another national confinement looms over the country, right this instant the season is being launched with new challenges to overcome….