French Entrepreneurs Find Marketing Gimmick : Vending Machines Dispense Jeans

Commuters and tourists passing through the Auber Metro station no longer have to bother with crowded stores, rude salespeople or rumpled cash to buy a pair of blue jeans.

Instead, they can pick up any of 10 sizes of jeans from a white vending machine that looks like a souped-up passport photo booth. After the customer pays $45 by credit card, a stiff new pair of Levi’s 501 blue jeans tumbles out in a cylindrical carton.

The machine contains a conversion chart for European and American sizes. For those who don’t know their size, the booth has a seat belt that registers the proper size on a computer screen when strapped around the waist.

Corsican Entrepreneurs

Those bemoaning this latest Yankee intrusion onto European soil need not look to Madison Avenue but to the French island of Corsica, home of the three entrepreneurs who dreamed up the Libre Service jeans machine.

Gerard Maisani, who owns the vending machine along with Rene Berlandi and Charles Padovani, said the machine has sold 78 pairs of jeans since it opened June 27.

“That’s not only good, that’s super-good,” Maisani said in a telephone interview. He and his partners expect to have 100 machines in French airports, train stations and other high-traffic areas by October, he said.

After that, he envisions expansion into Canada, Britain and Spain.

Maisani credited the machine’s success to the price of the jeans, about $10 cheaper than in European stores.

“The jeans are less expensive because there’s no personnel,” he said. “No one is needed to run the machine, and it’s open from 7 in the morning until 10 in the evening.”

Turbulent Year

The cost of the prototype vending machine was about $23,000, but Maisani said the price will decrease as more are manufactured.

The vending machine idea was devised after a turbulent year for the jeans market in France, which recorded sharp declines in sales of high-priced designer jeans.

Jeans at the lower end of the price scale have come out on top. Officials at Lee Cooper, a French jeans maker, report that orders for next winter already are at five times their current inventory.

Reaction to the vending machine in the French press has been nonchalant. The weekly newsmagazine Le Point, complaining that Levi’s blue jeans are “tailored badly, uncomfortable and difficult to button,” reported that they are being sold “in a vending machine in the Metro, like peanuts.”

The daily newspaper Liberation said that while people rarely have impulsive desires to buy a pair of jeans, at least those sold by vending machine are a relative bargain.

The machine draws bemused curiosity among subway riders, dozens of whom slow down as they walk past to read the instructions, then just shake their heads and go on their way.

At least one American youth visiting Paris thought the machine was a terrific idea. “I’d love to see them in the United States,” she said. “I could use a new pair of jeans.”

Some Complaints

“If you like the style, it’s fine,” said another tourist from Asheville, N.C. “These might work in large cities, although people might like to see what they’re buying.”

The complaint has been echoed by French consumers as well. “I don’t like to buy without seeing,” said one.

“I don’t know what color is going to come out,” added another skeptic.

All of the machine’s jeans are blue.