The Euro Shoe Group, the company behind the Bristol shoe and clothing stores, is applying for a judicial reorganization at the Hasselt court. She hopes to find a buyer or buyers through this procedure, “to maintain maximum employment”. The group with 117 stores in Belgium announced this on Friday.
Euro Shoe Group suffered heavily for years from, for example, store closures during the corona crisis, rising rental and energy costs, and so on. Things seemed to be improving in 2022, with the first operational profit in years, but things have been going downhill again since the autumn of 2023. “The entire market has taken a hit,” says CEO Elise Vanaudenhove. “Turnovers continued to decline. And if you don’t have buffers, things go very quickly. Today we are not strong enough to be able to absorb these blows ourselves. That is why we are looking for buyers.”
If the application is approved, the group wants to work with a legal representative to look for “potential acquirers in the broad retail landscape for all or parts of the organization”. From next week, Bristol is planning a sale in stores “to ensure continuity during the process”.
Euro Shoe Group, a family business founded in 1925, has approximately 170 employees at its head office in Beringen. The stores in Belgium are independent operators. The organization in the Netherlands, with about eighty stores, is not involved in the legal proceedings.