Price pressure in Switzerland
“When the Swiss National Bank lifted the minimal exchange rate on the euro mid-January, that caused a sizeable increase of the price pressure in our Swiss home market. It also created a massive, currency-driven turnover drop in all other regions”, CEO Markus Voegeli said.
The fashion company’s turnover dropped 13.3 % to 392 million Swiss francs (360 million euro), although the like-for-like turnover drop was much lower at 4.1 %. The company did manage to lower its operational costs by 24 million Swiss francs (22 million euro), down to 262 million Swiss francs (240 million euro). Nevertheless, that cost-cutting measure did not balance out the exchange rate fluctuations.
That meant that Charles Vögele had to deal with a 36 million Swiss francs (33 million euro) loss, which is three times as much as its losses last year (12 million Swiss franc).
Charles Vögele’s Benelux operations did present positive numbers: net turnover grew 0.7 %, while German turnover dropped 4 % and Swiss turnover even dropped 8.6 %.
