(News Bulletin 247) – The group announced a few days ago that the Habitat.fr site would resume its commercial activities during the next month.

The timetable is becoming clearer for the commercial relaunch of the Habitat.fr site. As a reminder, the Bobigny court placed Habitat in liquidation at the end of December. This sealed the fate of the brand founded in 1964 and which employed 400 people.

The Cafom group, owner of the license, had nevertheless entered into a brand licensing agreement with Vente-unique.com. The online furniture site then announced, at the end of April, that it intended to “reactivate” Habitat.fr “before summer 2024”.

Vente-unique.com is now a little more precise. On May 11, the group indicated that the Habitat.fr site should “become a merchant again in June”, with priority given to processing requests from customers who had been penalized by the liquidation.

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“Revitalize” the brand

The group indicated that it had validated the first files of these customers in France. “Each customer concerned will receive from Vente-unique.com, free of charge, a Habitat voucher from the very next opening of the Habitat.fr e-commerce site,” explained the company.

Customers will be able to use these vouchers to purchase the Habitat products of their choice, “according to freely accepted conditions”, continued the company. “The form is still online on the Habitat.fr website, if certain impacted customers still wish to come forward,” she added.

More generally, “the iconic products will gradually be put back online after the reopening of the site” and “the objective” will be, in the following weeks and months, “to bring new models to revitalize” the brand.

On April 28 on BFM Business, the general director of Vente-unique.com, Sacha Vigna, judged that Habitat “was a brand in the daily life of the French”, and recalled that it would be relaunched online and “modernized”. Vente-unique.com will restore “all its luster” to the brand, added the manager.

Growth of more than 10% in the first half

The furniture market remains a “cousin” sector of real estate, he recalled. With the rise in interest rates and the drop in transactions and therefore moves, furniture has logically suffered. But Sacha Vigna explained that the diversified geographical footprint of his group in Europe as well as its online positioning allowed it to stand out from the crowd.

Vente-unique.com also published this Tuesday morning its activity for the first half of 2023-2024, the period ending at the end of March. The group generated revenues of 90.26 million euros, an increase of 11.4%. The company also anticipates a “significant increase” in adjusted gross operating income (Ebitda) over the half-year.

TP ICAP Midcap judges that the publication is “more than reassuring since excluding the effect of the loss of logistics activity, growth in the second quarter is 10%”. “The next few quarters will remain ‘challenging’ (difficult, Editor’s note) but the group should once again outperform,” adds the research office.

“The launch of the Habitat site could bring a little growth from the fourth quarter. If certain fears around this recovery are justified, the valuation of the stock allows us to take the risk,” he also believes.