Printemps Group: Jean-Marc Bellaiche to step down as chairman

After five years in office, the president of Printemps announced his departure on September 15. Arriving during the pandemic, he succeeded in transforming the group, putting it back on track for profitability and opening two international stores. However, his successor, who has yet to be named, will have to tackle the group’s high level of debt.

Like the presidents of the French Republic, Jean-Marc Bellaiche will have served a five-year term as president of the Printemps group.

But unlike Emmanuel Macron, he has chosen to resign, leaving behind a sense of mission accomplished. Even if everything is far from settled in the department store group, which, like the French state, is suffering from significant debt…

Printemps has confirmed the information revealed on September 4 by Fashion Network.

Five-year term

“After a five-year term as president of the Printemps group, Jean-Marc Bellaiche has announced to the group’s Supervisory Board that, for personal reasons, he will not be renewing his term, which expires on September 15. “ said the group, which has been owned by the Qatari investment fund Disa since 2013, which thanked ”Jean-Marc Bellaiche for his commitment and the successful transformation of the group that he has achieved.”

FashionNetwork obtained an internal memo addressed to the group’s staff, totaling 3,300 employees, in which Jean-Marc Bellaiche announced his departure.

“After careful consideration, and with the feeling that I have accomplished my mission, I have decided not to renew this mandate when it expires,” wrote Jean-Marc Bellaiche, listing the changes he has overseen within the group. Admitting that “this decision was difficult to make, given my attachment to this wonderful institution and to all of you, the women and men who are its driving force,” he said he believed “that the time had come for him to devote himself to a new project, the details of which he would communicate at a later date.”

According to the press, Jean-Marc Bellaiche is preparing to leave the distribution sector.

In search of a new president

Since September 15, the group’s executive committee has been acting as interim leader, while its supervisory board has been searching for a new president.

This is a considerable challenge, as Jean-Marc Bellaiche leaves behind an impressive track record and a transformed group that is still heavily in debt.

Jean-Marc Bellaiche took over as president of Printemps on September 12, 2020, replacing Paolo de Cesare after 13 years in office, and successfully steered the group through the critical period of the pandemic.

This Centralien (Supélec, class of 1992), who also holds an MBA from INSEAD (1997), had all the assets he needed to succeed in this perilous mission.

After 22 years in Paris and New York at the Boston Consulting Group as Senior Partner and Managing Director, Global Leader, in charge of Luxury, Fashion, and Beauty, he joined Tiffany & Co., also in New York, from 2014 to 2018, as Senior Vice President, in charge of strategy and business development. After a brief stint at Arianee as a board member and then as Director of Strategy at ContentSquare, he took over the management of Printemps.

Extraordinary transformations

In his farewell note to the department store group’s employees, Jean-Marc Bellaiche emphasized that “the transformations that have taken place over the past five years have been extraordinary and will leave a strong mark on the group and on himself, ”both as a director and as a person.” He also explained that he could not “list all the extraordinary achievements of recent years, nor all the key performance indicators that we have together made positive despite the very strong headwinds linked to the economic, geopolitical, and industrial situation.”

Fashion Network recalls that after taking “a series of measures to restore the group’s profitability (closing unprofitable stores, such as Italie 2 in Paris and the Strasbourg store), and ”restructuring the group’s organization,” it changed the management team, “by integrating more women” and “gave new impetus to the group’s CSR strategy,” embodied by the slogan “United towards responsible beauty,” and finally “clarified the department store’s brand identity.”

Le Printemps also reformatted “its visual identity and brand concepts”, launching “Saison 1865.” On the customer side, it has revised its strategy, focusing on both French and foreign customers, and has invested in both e-commerce (now 10% of Printemps’ revenue and 12% at Citadium) and “brick and mortar”, notably through its personal shopper service.

International offensive

He also resumed the international offensive, where the group had not operated since the closure of its store in Jeddah (Saudi Arabia) in 2006. In addition to the opening of a Printemps in Doha in 2022, he opened a flagship store in New York in early 2025.

Finally, he has put Printemps back on track for profitability by announcing, in early 2025, that the group’s operating income had returned to positive territory for two fiscal years. However, Fashion Network notes that the latter remains “burdened” by its debts, particularly those “incurred to meet the challenges of the 2020-2021 pandemic period.”

Since the publication in 2018 of a turnover of €1.7 billion in 2018, Printemps has not released any more recent results.

It is now up to the Qatari investment fund Disa to find the new gem to lead its iconic brand, whose flagship store on Boulevard Haussmann in Paris is celebrating its 160th anniversary this year.

The group has 21 Printemps department stores, nine Citadium stores, and the online boutiques Place des Tendances and Made in Design.