The renewal o marks has remained irtually nonexistent

or ten years, PC (sale by correspondence) li ed his last years in economic stay: projects o redundancies to La Redoute, the iling o the Cami , the announcement o the next trans er balance by 3 Swiss International o the majority o Co idis con irm this.

How did they come here The PC is trans ormed in depth during the last decade, without always realize: competition is de eloped in unpublished proportions, the clients and the nature o the o er ha e changed, new actors shared growth, new jobs and the margin....

O ten o erlooked, the increase in the number o points o retail sales continued to trim the unds o trade o the PCistes in the pro ince. The de elopment o the Internet made skip the o er o a ew hundreds o PCistes at the end o the 1990s to o er 40,000 e-traders today. New intermediaries in the consumer purchase process (site o intermediation, search engines, comparator o price, etc.) ha e captured the margin with limited with in estments to inance the catalogues or stocks.

The PCistes grow a mid-tier o ering in their catalog while their clients buy now at the best price o standard products with high added alue o brand or... discount. But the PCistes ha e seen their brand alue all without becoming o the discounters. The absence o renewal o their o er led goodwill o most o the PCistes to age ten years... ten years. The renewal o marks has remained irtually non-existent.

Hunting at all costs the client and the command, the product marketing o the PCistes became a marketing o the rebate. During this time, a new trade o pri ate sales "Linearizing" balances throughout the year. Consumers and semi-entrepreneurs ha e also become endors or new clients, on the websites o intermediation between indi iduals.

The rate o ser ice o the PCistes (the proportion o satis ying orders or customers) is ery o ten less than that o the e-commerce sites. O erexploitation o the paper iles, to reely resell newspaper publishers and the PCistes, discourage Internet shoppers besieged paper. The di iculty o the PCistes to e ol e their database management by customers home, to reduce the number o catalogues sent to a single client on the Internet management was soon to be put in place: many PCistes ha e lost part o their business, while de oting signi icant resources to build rom scratch a und o digital commerce. The rule o the PCistes 1 home 2 buys rom distance, while 70 o Internet users purchase online, has eluded them.

The PCistes still store up to 70 o their estimated sales: collection errors cost price Markdown and ixed capital. The o ercapitalization o the start-up o e-commerce has allowed some o them to in est hea ily in the acquisition o customers, mechanically raising the prices o the market. E en worse or the PCistes new pri ate sales pro essions are exercised without stock, with a need or negati e working capital (positi e cash low up to 35 o the CA), which lea es large resources to und marketing and growth.

The ertical integration o the PCistes exercising the pro essions o their alue chain posed on them hea y ixed costs, which are are ree number o merchants on the Internet. The PCistes, as part o the distribution or the automobile distribution, are since long the core o their margin on inancial products o the consumer credit, with rates ranging up to more than 20: BancWest, resold by PPR, still operates with clients o La Redoute and other signs o the PPR-RedCats Group; CO IDIS operates or the Swiss 3 and in part or... the Cami (by their common C2C subsidiary). Case that their endors degrade credit. That today are worth the PCistes without these "rear margins" o sellers o consumer credit It is likely that the di iculties in re inancing o credit companies and de aults o households, which will increase i the recession is con irmed, announce hardest time yet or these companies.

Yet, the PCistes ha e many competiti e ad antages: a background o single trade in rance, aging brands but en iable ame, recognized operational burdens but aluable expertise, historical delay on the Internet today almost illed. But rethink in depth their models economic and marketing, the black years o the PC are be ore them.