“I still have some references but more.” In this Bouche-Du-Rhône Baker department store, finding an iron generator or a steam generator is looking for Easter eggs. Rasinage supplied with coffee makers, culinary products, oil -free freyers and other wireless vacuum cleaners, but without a trace of iron. And it is not because the store sold everything in this spring of 2025. It is rather because it has much more to sell.
And it does not seem to be a local specificity. Year after year, global sales in France of these products are red. According to the latest annual evaluation of the Professional Appliances Union (GIFAM), Sales of Plates (-8.7% in value) and steam electrical plants (-7.2%) still lost feathers in 2024.
At the end of the 2000s, the French bought 3 million steam plants each year, compared to 1.6 million aircraft in 2024, according to Nielseniq-GFK. In less than 20 years, sales have been divided by two.
More relaxed trained
In terms of ironing, the French habits have changed: the pile of clothing is lower. In companies, shirts and tailors have abandoned many offices for the benefit of a more relaxed wardrobe. In addition, with the rise of teleworking in companies, it is no longer necessary to wear professional clothes (and properly iron) five out of five.
In general, at work and at home, the French today favor pieces and textile materials that no longer necessarily need to pass through the ironing box.
Arrival of the defurers
The French use plates less frequently and their steam plants … that wears out less quickly. This slower pace of ironing extends the useful life of the devices “that remain more time” for their owners, underlines Laurent courses, which also evokes the arrival of new “innovations” that improve the sustainability of these same devices, such as anti -lime systems.
On the side of innovation, laundry is also worried: many washing machines and dryers now have a defective function, which allows it to recover a more flexible laundry at the end of the program, and that often does not need to be ironed.
The deaths have the favors of the French. Since they appeared in France in the early 2010s, they have seen their sales from year to year. Cheaper, allow to remove the folds of the clothes in a minimum of time, which can allow us to occur, this time again of the ironing phase.
In 2024, deform sales increased even more by 5.2% compared to the previous year, according to Nielseniq-GFK data for Gifam. But that is not wrong: the increase in defrost sales did not compensate for the drop in sales of plates and steam plants.
“I use my hair to soften my hair”
Because sometimes it is the system D that prevails, especially with young people. This is the case of Mathilde, 32, teacher without iron.
New textiles, less strict outfits, less expensive steam devices … If iron sales have fallen for more than a decade, it is not that the French neglect their appearance and attire. Arroyer “is not a market that has disappeared, far from it”, more Laurent courses. With a million iron plates and half a million steam energy plants sold in 2024, these devices remain in the hard core of the appliances of a French house.
Source: BFM TV
