SMCP sales hit record as Europe, America boom, despite APAC challenges

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Oct 26, 2022

French premium fashion specialist SMCP said on Wednesday that it saw record sales in Q3, despite Covid-related restrictions in China. Organic growth against the 2021 third quarter was “solid” and it confirmed its full-year guidance.

The owner of Sandro, Maje, Claudie Pierlot and Fursac said Q3 sales rose 9.4% on an organic basis and 13.5% on a reported basis year on year to reach €308 million. And in the first nine months of its financial year, its sales rose 17% organic and 20.5% reported to €874 million.

Europe and North America continued to benefit from “a very good momentum in Q3. APAC is still affected by Covid restrictions in Mainland China but the Q3 trend is of gradual improvement”.

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All of its brands also saw a solid Q3 performance, benefiting both from strong sales in physical stores and "dynamic" digital sales that represented 21% of its total turnover in the year so far.

Its success in 2022 has also allowed it to continue reducing its average discount rate.

Looking at the sales by region and by brand, on an organic basis, France rose 13.5% in Q3 to €99.1 million and the rest of EMEA rose 20.4% to €98.6 million. The Americas rose 12.5% to €49 million, although APAC fell 11.8% to €61.6 million. 

Those Q3 figures were good, but narrower than the increases seen in the year to date, although this is perhaps unsurprising given how quickly the global economic situation has deteriorated in recent months. But in APAC the Q3 performance was actually better than the year to date.

By brand, Sandro sales rose 9.5% on an organic basis to reach €150.2 million, while Maje was up 8% at €119.9 million, and the other brands increased 13.9% to €38.3 million.

The company said the French strength was “based on the success of the four brands’ collections and on good tourism flows during the summer (coming from Americas, Middle East, Europe, and some APAC nationalities)”.

In EMEA, the rise included a 51% like-for-like jump in physical stores and digital retail (own websites and e-partners). As in France, it resonated with both local customers and tourists in most European countries. 

APAC’s reduction was largely due to Covid resurgences in Mainland China with store closures and reduced footfall. However, “the APAC trend is of gradual improvement and the gap vs 2021 reduced significantly in Q3 compared to H1 (-12% organic vs Q3 2021)”. APAC excluding China “delivered a good progression vs 2021 in Q3, supported by the strong performances of Korea, Singapore, Malaysia and Australia”.

And in North America, despite a tough comparison basis, it made progress in both physical and digital stores. The US, Canada and Mexico all “recorded an excellent momentum”.

CEO Isabelle Guichot said of all this: “This performance reflects a strong momentum in Europe, notably thanks to the success of collections with local clients and the return of tourists, as well as in the United States where demand remains significant, in line with preceding quarters. 

“In Mainland China… we observed an improvement in our performance this quarter. 

“We have pursued our full-price strategy with success by substantially lowering the discount rate. We registered more and more qualitative digital sales in a context of a normalisation of the share of digital sales. 

“Finally, we have accelerated the implementation of our CSR strategy. In view of our performance in the first nine months of the year, and provided that the international situation does not deteriorate further in the final quarter, we confirm our full-year guidance.”