The struggling Nosoli group, which brings together the Furet du Nord and Decitre bookstore networks, announced on Tuesday June 30 that it plans to close 11 of the 27 stores of these two brands and cut a maximum of 163 positions.
In detail, seven Furet du Nord stores are expected to close: two in the Lille suburbs (Roubaix and Villeneuve-d’Ascq), three in Île-de-France (Aéroville in Roissy, Saint-Quentin-en-Yvelines and Plaisir), one in Pas-de-Calais (Béthune) and one in Reims. Four Decitre stores are condemned: two in Lyon, one in Grenoble and one in Saint-Étienne.
These 11 bookstores have 115 employees. But staffing adjustments are also envisaged in other maintained stores as well as in support functions.
A deep crisis
The Nosoli group, in receivership since June 1, achieved a turnover of 150 million euros in 2025. The bookstore sector is currently suffering in France, faced in particular with ever-increasing competition from e-commerce and the decline of reading on paper.
In April, the Paris Economic Affairs Court placed the Gibert group, the leading independent bookseller in France, which wishes to relaunch in the second-hand book segment, into receivership. The independent Montpellier bookstore Sauramps, an 80-year-old institution facing serious financial difficulties, also requested its placement in receivership in mid-June.
In 2024, 50 positions had already been eliminated within the Nosoli group: three Furet du Nord bookstores had closed in Lille, Paris and Beauvais, as well as two Decitre stores, in Annemasse (Haute-Savoie) and Bezons (Val-d’Oise).
Founded in Lille in 1921, Furet du Nord was notably the first French self-service bookstore, from 1959. Its flagship, located on the Grand’Place in Lille, was for a time, in the 1990s, the largest bookstore in the world. After expanding in its region of origin, then in the Paris region, Furet du Nord bought Decitre in 2019, another century-old bookseller of Lyon origin, and the whole gave birth in 2022 to the Nosoli group.
With this new drastic restructuring, Nosoli hopes to “rapidly restore its competitiveness with the aim of ensuring the sustainability of its activities”. Nosoli (currently 600 employees in total) says it wants to do “everything possible to favor solutions to preserve jobs, particularly through reclassifications”.
