Allmat, it is a success story built brick after brick: only one store in its early days, thirteen in twenty years. Renovations everywhere, surfaces that grow to store everything you need to masons, roofers, carpenters … Until the day when crises began to cut the walls. Since the family business body had only four deposits (in Ciney, Codnelée, Orp-Jauche and Floreffe). “It’s a bit like a child who dies todaybreathes Amélie Body. It is a family business: my parents built it, my brother and I resumed in 2008. But since the covid, the route has been strewn with pitfalls. “
Before 2020, the question did not arise: having department stores went without saying. But with the pandemic, everything was complicated. Costs have soared: +50 % for certain products such as cement, bricks, concrete or hourdis, and up to +74 % for cement alone. The delivery times have lengthened, the prices of transport and energy have soared, and the salary costs increased by 14.5 % in two years. At the same time, building permits fell by 37 %, requests for mortgage loans of 50 %. “Successive crises have destabilized our management model. We lost our credit insurance, and that, for us, is like removing the foundations of a house.”
To resist, Allmat has undertaken a vast deset rating. Hotton and Seraing stores have closed, that of Marche-en-Famenne was sold. The storage hall of the Ciney site and some land has been sold. In total, nearly 40,000 m² of surfaces were sold, on the 300,000 m² of the sites in 2020.
“It has become impossible to continue”
In total, the company had to shed nine stores in five years. “Selling a store is never easy. But we had only one goal: to save as many jobs as possible.” At each transfer, Allmat fought to apply the CCT 32B, a device that allows employees to automatically go under contract with the buyer, by retaining their seniority and their working conditions. “Thanks to that, we were able to maintain wages, seniority, and avoid layoffs related to sale. We are proud to have saved more than 150 jobs.”
But the spiral was launched. Less turnover, fewer stocks, fewer customers: the vicious circle ended up reaching the last four stores, in Ciney, Codnelée, Orp-Jauche and Floreffe. “Post-Cavid challenges have financially weakened our company, disrupted our stocks and our activity. Despite our resilience and all our research in solutions, it has become impossible to continue.”
Forty years after the laying of its first stone, Allmat is preparing to disappear from the landscape. The brand will have accompanied thousands of projects, supported by dozens of local businesses, and crossed the economic cycles as we cross a project: with its plans, its hammer blows, its unforeseen events … and, sometimes, its demolitions. “We were punctuated by one thing: to preserve what could be.” Even if, sometimes, you have to dismantle to better rebuild elsewhere …