May 13 was the deadline for potential buyers of French fashion chain Jennyfer to file their bids. Jennyfer, which has 999 employees, was placed in judicial liquidation while continuing to trade on April 30, and FashionNetwork.com has learnt from sources close to the matter that 12 bids for the chain have been put forward, most of them for a partial acquisition. The bids will be officially presented to Jennyfer’s employee representatives at a committee meeting scheduled on May 15. Jennyfer, whose main consumer targets are teenagers and young women, was placed in receivership in 2023. In summer 2024, it was sold to two of its senior executives, Yann Pasco and Jean-Charles Gaume, backed by Shanghai Pure Fashion Garments Co. Ltd., a Chinese manufacturer producing for Jennyfer.

Jennyfer, which has been allowed to continue trading until May 28, currently runs 130 directly operated stores in France (plus 53 affiliated ones), and approximately 40 outside France. A store fleet that has attracted several potential buyers, including some big names in French retail.

FashionNetwork.com has learnt that Brittany-based group Beaumanoir (owner among others of Cache Cache, Bonobo, La Halle, and Boardriders) would like to buy 26 Jennyfer stores. “The units in question are positioned in strategic locations that would allow the Beaumanoir group to continue to extend the retail footprint of its existing brands,” Beaumanoir told FashionNetwork.com. The group’s bid reportedly means that 160 jobs would be saved. Beaumanoir is also interested in buying the rights to the Jennyfer brand, to have the option of subsequently relaunching it. 

A joint bid has been put forward by fashion retailers Celio and Pimkie, which are said to have agreed to acquire approximately 50 stores, the majority of them for Pimkie, which could still operate them under the Jennyfer name. Over 300 jobs would be involved in this bid. After an organisational overhaul, Pimkie has recently claimed to have found new momentum. Menswear retailer Celio would instead have the opportunity of expanding its fleet of ‘twin stores’ combining the Celio and Be Camaïeu brands, by adding seven new addresses, as Celio told FashionNetwork.com.

Other bids relate only to Jennyfer’s inventory, notably by inventory clearance specialists like Noz, which in the past acquired the stock of several struggling brands, notably Minelli, Olly Gan, and Esprit. Finally, a few bids relate to a limited number of Jennyfer stores only.

All the bids will be examined by the Bobigny trade court on May 28. Until then, Jennyfer stores will continue to operate, but the brand’s e-shop has been closed.

Jennyfer deployed a recovery plan last year, which included revamping its brand image and broadening the consumer target, but in the last nine months the chain’s owners have failed to make the recovery a reality, penalised by “skyrocketing costs, slumping purchasing power, changes in the apparel market and increasingly aggressive international competition.”

Jennyfer was founded 40 years ago, and in 2023 it filed a redundancy plan that related to 75 positions at headquarters and logistics.