Yves Rocher to exit UK, website orders will stop in March

By

Sandra Halliday

Published
Feb 21, 2019

Yves Rocher is exiting the UK with the French beauty giant’s website set to stop taking orders from the middle of next month. The company blamed the economy for its move, which could mean the looming spectre of Brexit, the UK being officially due to leave the European Union on March 29, exactly two weeks after Yves Rocher’s last-order date.

In a website statement, it said “the economic context does not allow the Yves Rocher brand to continue trading in the UK anymore.”

However, the company didn’t confirm whether that meant Brexit so we don’t know whether the UK might have been a tough market for the firm even without the Brexit issue. 

A report on InternetRetailing cited SimilarWeb data claiming the company’s webstore sees 153 million page views globally each year with around half of that traffic coming from European Economic Area countries, 18% of it from its home country of France, but only 0.5% from Britain.

The brand’s exit also comes with a clearance sale with the firm offering free delivery for orders over £29 and free gifts for orders above £43.

Yves Rocher won’t be the first beauty brand to end UK shipping with Sephora, which had closed its physical presence in the country some years ago, last year ending shipments from its US site to Britain. It said UK customers made up only a small percentage of its business.