Yves Rocher closed its DACH stores — a third of its European retail footprint

Yves Rocher was founded in 1965 by Yves Rocher in La Gacilly, Brittany, building a global botanical beauty brand on mail-order catalogues and later a network of more than 3,000 stores in 88 countries. By the 2010s it was one of France's best-known beauty exporters, with parent Groupe Rocher reporting €2.75 billion in turnover in 2019 and employing 13,500 people. The brand's international expansion had been built on franchised and company-owned stores in markets across Europe.

The DACH region — Germany, Austria and Switzerland — had been a major market for Yves Rocher for decades. But online competition, rising retail rents and changing consumer habits made its store portfolio unsustainable. Germany, where Yves Rocher had a large network of franchised stores, was particularly affected. The brand had already closed stores in the Netherlands in earlier years. The post-pandemic shift to ecommerce accelerated the decline, and the stores could not compete with online-native beauty brands and drugstore competitors.

In 2023, Yves Rocher announced it would close all of its physical stores in Germany, Austria and Switzerland and operate exclusively online in the DACH region. The closures affected more than 350 jobs and effectively ended the brand's retail presence in one of its largest European markets. In January 2024, Groupe Rocher announced a further 300 job cuts over the next three years as part of a broader restructuring. The company also put its perfume factory in Ploërmel up for sale and began divesting non-beauty brands Petit Bateau and Stanhome to focus on its core beauty business.

The retreat from DACH was the most dramatic example of a pattern affecting mid-market French beauty brands in Europe. Once a brand expanded into expensive retail leases in high-traffic shopping streets, the fixed-cost structure made it vulnerable when foot traffic declined. Yves Rocher chose to retreat rather than continue bleeding cash on unprofitable stores. The brand continues to operate in France and other markets, but the DACH closures marked the end of its ambitions as a mass retail force across Europe.