Darty reports Y-o-Y sales declines of -2.9% Y-o-Y for fiscal Q3 (the period from 1 November 2014 31 January 2015), as the period suffers from comparison to a stronger 2014 and a weak tablet and digital camera sales.
Also hitting the retailer's quarter-- and consumer confidence-- are the terrorist attacks on Paris in early January, offsetting strong performance on the Black Friday weekend and web sales growth reaching nearly 10% to make 15% of total product sales.
Darty says multichannel click-and-collect proves popular, with 30% of December online sales being collected in-store.
However total group revenues are up by 2.4%, thanks to "good" growth in the white goods and communications categories. The quarter also saw the retailer adding 11 franchisees in France (bringing the total number of French franchise stores to 34) and completing the acquisition of 17 "profitable" Netherlands outlets from HiM Retail.
Meanwhile the Vanden Borre in Belgium and BCC in the Netherlands see Y-o-Y revenue declines of -1.6% and -2.3% respectively, being hit by a weak multimedia market and a number of national strikes on December 2014.
In other Darty news, the retailer is adding robots to the its sales force. Yes, really! As Le Figaro reports Darty has 3 mechanical men-- specifically Nao robots made by France's own Aldebaran Robotics-- making the rounds in Paris, Nice, Lille, Bordeaux, Brussels and Amsterdam stores, where they show off a variety of connected devices, such as Philips Hue wireless lightbulbs and smart TVs.
The robots also understand basic words (such as "tablet), and reply with pre-recorded messages. However flesh and blood Darty employees don't need to worry about their jobs just yet, since each robot requires 3 staff to operate.
“It is very early days, we are trying to see how we can create a link between this robot and the consumer,” Darty CEO Régis Schultz says. “It really moves like a human, what is less good is the voice, that is something we need to work on, the movement creates a link but the voice is difficult to understand and hear, it is not nice on your ear.”
Go The French Nao Robot Takes its First Steps at Darty (Le Figaro)