Roubaix, 23 March 2020
Dear Employees and Partners,
For the past few months, all across the globe, the world is facing an unprecedented crisis that has completely disrupted the global economy and our professional and personal routines.
As we all work through this challenge together, the Group is showing its responsibility, tenacity and solidarity thanks to all of your efforts.
We are both grateful and proud.
The values that we have been promoting for more than 20 years are even more meaningful today. We understand that they are our best asset as we work together to tackle the issues arising from this unprecedented challenge.
WE ACT FOR KIDS resonates for all of us more than ever, not only from a societal and business point of view but from a parental and familial standpoint as well.
Since the beginning of this crisis, our top priority has been to keep every one of our employees and customers safe by rigorously following the WHO’s instructions and all directives from governments around the world.
To date, nearly all our revenue-generating activities have stopped and most of you are not working.
Our group has been built on a solid foundation that will allow us to adapt swiftly to new changes and crisis situations.
While this challenge was unpredictable, we are doing everything we can in terms of cash flow to reassure our financial partners. All our financial and legal teams are hard at work every day to secure our funding and keep us on solid footing to quickly get back up and running.
After closing nearly all our stores worldwide, we have also had to temporarily halt our e-commerce sales.
Our executive teams and several employees are already working on a strategy to gradually start up our activities again on a case-by-case basis as soon as we are able to do so.
We’re also continuing to do everything we need to do to support the company and get back to work. This includes:
- Forging human connections with our customers, partners, employees, parents and children, who are the reason we do what we do;
- Designing, producing and shipping our upcoming collections;
- Developing projects to speed up our global omnichannel retail activities.
Finally, and more than ever, we have a societal mission to do our part in supporting the global economic recovery and keeping people working in safe, calm and secure conditions.
We will learn from this experience and come back with a renewed energy to quickly and sustainably transform our Group.
We need to join forces and remember makes us different: our optimism and enthusiasm for the common good.
This supportive and tenacious mindset will help us get the company going again in the right direction.
My thoughts go out to all of you who are patiently waiting to get back to work, and I would like to extend my heartfelt thanks to all those still working and whose efforts are crucial to getting the company ready for the next step.
You can count on all of the executive teams and me to support you though these extraordinary circumstances.
Thank you for your trust and commitment.
Take care of yourselves and your family.
Grégoire Duforest
