Frédéric Born has been running a Peugeot two-wheeler dealership on Avenue de Saint-Ouen (XVIIIe) for 22 years. He will permanently close his store on March 31, 2024, in front of which three scooters are aligned this January morning, waiting for repair. “At that time, they occupied the sidewalk for 10 m,” sighs Frédéric.
According to the Solly Azar AAA-Data Observatory, Paris recorded a 19% decrease in sales of thermal scooters of less than 50 cm3 in 2023. Out of the 480 establishments in the capital, 28 closed their doors during the year. Of the eight Peugeot dealerships in the capital at the beginning of 2023, only three remain. For Frédéric, whose father already had a dealership on Avenue de la Grande Armée (XVIIe) closed in 2008, it’s the “end of an era” he has known for almost thirty years.
“Télétravail”, paying for parking, traffic restrictions…
“What we experienced between 2002 and 2020 is over,” admits Frédéric. Although he did not “suffer too much” from the Covid-related health crisis, changes in lifestyle since the pandemic have impacted his business. With the widespread use of telecommuting, two-wheelers are used less: a snowball effect for the manager who saw repair requests, the most profitable part of his business, collapse. In 2023, according to our estimates, 5.8% of scooter repair shops closed.
In addition to telecommuting, according to Frédéric, there are also restrictions on the circulation of two-wheelers in central Paris, including the ban on riding between lanes. “Tickets are becoming more regular and the time saved by zigzagging no longer exists,” explains Frédéric, who has noticed a weariness among his clientele, leading them to abandon their motorized vehicles, often opting for mechanical or electric bikes.
Normally, Benjamin would change his scooter every three years. “Today, I’ve been riding the same one for five years: I have no interest in investing if I can’t ride freely in Paris,” he regrets. But what has convinced most of Frédéric’s clients is the introduction, since September 1, 2022, of paid parking for thermal motorbikes. And the numbers speak for themselves: “I used to sell about fifteen vehicles per month. Overnight, I dropped to two or three.”
“My business has become unsellable”
“I understand that my clients don’t want to add an additional tax,” says the man whose “the boss is the client”: this regulation has finished him off. In total, Frédéric’s turnover has decreased by 30%, resulting in a loss of benefit of 4,000 to 5,000 euros per month, eating into his cash flow to pay his expenses. Even by “getting his hands dirty” to reduce his payroll, the rent remains too high to bear. The conclusion is clear for Frédéric: his business has “become unsellable.”
To reduce his expenses, Frédéric Born has returned to mechanical work and now employs only one person in his dealership on Avenue de Saint-Ouen (XVIIIe).
As the manager of one of the three “La clinique du scooter” stores in the XIVe arrondissement, Thomas Bou hanna is waiting until the end of 2024 to decide on a possible closure. “What really drove the nail in the coffin is inflation: as a result, mobility is becoming less important,” he analyzes.
“I would only lose five little minutes if I rode an electric bike”
For Matthieu, a client of Frédéric for 15 years, this free fall is the result of a “hunt for thermal engines.” He still uses his scooter daily, finding it “much simpler.” But the fifty-year-old admits that it is mostly a matter of a generation not necessarily ready to change its habits. “I feel selfish, I keep my two-wheeler out of laziness but the transition to soft mobility remains logical, physically and ecologically speaking,” he confesses.
Unaffected by paid parking, electric scooters quickly became the ideal fallback solution. But after a surge in sales in 2022, the appeal for these vehicles quickly waned: sales dropped by 16% in 2023 according to the Solly Azar AAA-Data Observatory. Frédéric did not venture into electric scooters. “I would have had to sell about fifty per month to be profitable,” he comments. Not to mention that an electric scooter requires much fewer repairs than a thermal scooter, the primary source of profitability for dealers.
A long-term project for the City of Paris, the transition to electric also extends to bicycles, whose usage is boosted by the creation of a hundred cycle paths in the capital since 2020. Matthieu admits that with the reduction in lanes for motorists and two-wheelers, “I would only lose five little minutes if I rode an electric bike.”
Frédéric also did not want to try selling these popular bicycles. “We changed our philosophy: you can’t find the green spirit in my thermal bike shop. Nobody would think of coming to me to buy an electric bike,” says the dealer, who used to sell nearly 300 bikes per year in the 1990s.
The suburbs less affected
Matthieu, a two-wheeler owner, now only uses it occasionally. For his intra-muros journeys, he now prefers the electric bike because “the price of parking is exorbitant.” But for Frédéric, the transition to the electric bike is also a matter of situation. “Those who are really suffering are the residents of the outer suburbs, especially since public transportation to the suburbs is not efficient,” he argues, being a resident in Ermont (Val-d’Oise) himself.
Among his clients who are still at the store, there are also “restaurateurs but also many people working in the nightlife industry, who couldn’t take the metro or bike home, closed at the hours that concern them,” defends the dealer, who is considering a career change in a completely different sector in Gironde. As of now, Paris, Vincennes, Charenton (Val-de-Marne), and Boulogne-Billancourt (Hauts-de-Seine) apply paid parking for thermal motorbikes.
