Flink throws in the towel too. Companies dedicated to express home delivery of groceries in France or “quick commerce” are leaving the French market one after the other due to tougher regulations. The home shopping platform, which employs 218 people on permanent contracts in France, “will be liquidated” on Friday, its management announced on Thursday, which declared a cessation of payments before the Paris commercial court.
The company suffered from the inflationary context, “still strong regulatory pressure” and “investor disinterest” in the sector, declared Chairman and CEO Guillaume Luscan. Flink was one of the last to operate in France solely in this sector, and yet was somewhat of a survivor of “quick commerce”, or the express delivery of groceries to the home.
Resumption at the last minute in September
Last September, while it was in receivership like many other platforms specializing in express delivery at home, it was taken over at the last minute. Guillaume Luscan, its general director, the German parent company and the Algerian start-up Yassir joined forces to take over the company and renamed it New Flink France.
This rescue made it possible to maintain 56% of the workforce, or more than 200 people on permanent contracts. The start-up Yassir, “specializing in on-demand and payment services, one of the most valuable in the Europe, Middle East and Africa zone”, according to Guillaume Luscan, had injected five million euros into the business.
The weight of inflation
But inflation has weighed on product purchasing conditions and the “financial context is very difficult”, with investors “losing interest in the sector” after the recent disappointments of “quick commerce”, explained the CEO.
“I did everything to save this company,” said Guillaume Luscan, who underlined “the successes of the takeover on several points” including “the improvement in profitability of 80% over one year”. But New Flink France can no longer “absorb its fixed costs” today, regretted the CEO.
Regulatory pressure
Above all, Flink is still subject to regulatory pressure, “which remains strong” and which would involve “significant” investments on the part of New Flink France to transform a certain number of its sites. Indeed, in March 2023, very restrictive regulations put a stop to surviving players specializing in “quick commerce”.
The government had decreed that “dark stores” – these premises where products to be delivered are stored – were warehouses and not businesses, opening the way to regulation by town halls of this activity, and even to the closure of certain sites. . While they arrived with fanfare on the French market, taking advantage of the confinements linked to the Covid-19 pandemic to develop, there is now not much left of the fifteen or so players specialized in express delivery.