Once a major European youth-fashion chain, Pimkie entered a prolonged corporate decline after reaching its high-water mark of 716 stores in 30 countries in 2018. The brand announced 208 redundancies and 37 French store closures that year, after earlier plans to terminate an unspecified number of contracts and amid multiple executive departures. Its Belgian and Swiss subsidiaries entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2021. A further restructuring announced on 29 March 2023 proposed closing 64 stores over four years and eliminating 257 positions; after redundancy plans in March 2023 and January 2024, Pimkie entered safeguard proceedings in May 2024. The Lille Métropole Commercial Court approved a two-year continuation plan on 30 October 2024, with Salih Halassi becoming the company’s sole shareholder. The most politically charged episode came on 16 September 2025, when Pimkie signed a partnership with Shein to sell online collections manufactured in China under the Pimkie name. Employees and the French Federation of Women’s Ready-to-Wear Clothing criticized the agreement, while observers argued that it could help Shein blunt the effect of proposed French regulations targeting fast fashion. The backlash intensified when Pimkie was expelled one month later from the Fédération des enseignes de l’habillement, the French trade association for clothing retailers. The source documents a dramatic brand retrenchment and an industry-governance controversy, but does not itself establish a specific factory disaster, forced-labor finding, or criminal violation connected to the Shein production.
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AI concept artworkArchive Record · 2020s
Pimkie’s Collapse and the 2025 Shein Partnership That Triggered a French Fashion Backlash
Pimkie and Shein / 2020s
Once a major European youth-fashion chain, Pimkie entered a prolonged corporate decline after reaching its high-water mark of 716 stores in 30 countries in 2018. The brand announced 208 redundancies and 37 French store closures that year, after earlier plans to terminate an unspecified number of contracts and amid multiple executive departures. Its Belgian and Swiss subsidiaries entered bankruptcy proceedings in 2021. A further restructuring announced on 29 March 2023 proposed closing 64 stores over four years and eliminating 257 positions; after redundancy plans in March 2023 and January 2024, Pimkie entered safeguard proceedings in May 2024. The Lille Métropole Commercial Court approved a two-year continuation plan on 30 October 2024, with Salih Halassi becoming the company’s sole shareholder. The most politically charged episode came on 16 September 2025, when Pimkie signed a partnership with Shein to sell online collections manufactured in China under the Pimkie name. Employees and the French Federation of Women’s Ready-to-Wear Clothing criticized the agreement, while observers argued that it could help Shein blunt the effect of proposed French regulations targeting fast fashion. The backlash intensified when Pimkie was expelled one month later from the Fédération des enseignes de l’habillement, the French trade association for clothing retailers. The source documents a dramatic brand retrenchment and an industry-governance controversy, but does not itself establish a specific factory disaster, forced-labor finding, or criminal violation connected to the Shein production.
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