Faced with a “particularly demanding” economic environment, the Nosoli group, which oversees the 600 employees of the Furet du Nord and Decitre bookstores, is requesting its placement in receivership, with possible layoffs at stake. This procedure should open on June 1 with the Lille Métropole commercial court, Nosoli announced in a press release published Tuesday. A detailed recovery plan will be presented “in the coming weeks”, specifies the group.
Franck Brunet, CFDT delegate for Furet du Nord, the only union represented in the brand, declared his fears “both for the sites and for the employees”, at the end of an extraordinary social and economic committee in Tourcoing (North) on Tuesday, for present the procedure to elected staff members. “The losses are increasing as the months go by,” he said, referring to “a breakup from December and a very complicated start to the year.” “We’re going down a fairly steep path, but we’re still alive,” he said.
600 employees and 27 bookstores
Nosoli has some 600 employees and 27 bookstores, including 18 Furet du Nord, mainly based in the Nord, Pas-de-Calais and the Paris region, as well as 9 Decitre stores, mainly in the Rhône-Alpes region. “The cultural goods market is going through a deep crisis, marked by strong pressure on margins and a decline in volumes of almost 15% since 2021,” recalls Nosoli in his press release. This context has been “further weakened in recent months by changes in purchasing power and consumption patterns”. Despite a transformation of its activities undertaken since last year, “the more rapid deterioration” than expected of its market since the beginning of this year has forced the group to resort to this legal recovery solution.
A new CSE scheduled for June 2
Several areas of transformation have already been identified: rebalancing activity between book sales and non-book sales (games, stationery, creative hobbies), strengthening further in digital and developing activity among professionals (communities, universities, independent bookstores, etc.), underlines Nosoli. The activities of Furet du Nord and Decitre will continue normally during its legal recovery, assures the group, which achieved a turnover of 150 million euros in 2025. According to union sources, a new CSE is planned for June 2. It should, according to Mr. Brunet, “carry more precise announcements”.
The bookstore sector is currently suffering in France, faced in particular with ever-increasing competition from e-commerce and the decline in paper reading. In April, the Paris Economic Court placed the Gibert group, France’s leading independent bookseller, in receivership, which wishes to relaunch in the second-hand book segment. In 2024, 50 positions had already been eliminated within the Nosoli group: three Furet du Nord bookstores had closed in Lille, Paris and Beauvais, as well as two Decitre stores, in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie) and Bezons (Val-d’Oise).
After the CSE on Tuesday morning in Tourcoing, near Lille, and in the Lyon suburbs, the announcements were presented to all of the group’s employees, as in Lille, where the main Furet du Nord store was closed for the occasion between 1:00 p.m. and 2 p.m. Chloé Lehingue, 25, a psychiatry student and occasional client of Furet du Nord, finds it “a shame” that “the paper is starting to disappear a little”: “there aren’t many people my age who really read books anymore,” she lamented.
Over 100 years of history
Founded in Lille in 1921, the Furet du Nord was notably the first French self-service bookstore, from 1959. After expanding in its region, then in the Paris region, the Furet du Nord bought in 2019 Decitre, another century-old bookseller of Lyon origin, and the whole gave birth in 2022 to the Nosoli group.
