Mr Bricolage Blog

Mr Bricolage opens a new store in the Castellane district at Marseille. This store is located 10-12 avenue de Toulon in the 6th district, and covers 372 m² of sales area.

The store is part of Mr Bricolage’s strategy to re-conquer town centres. The store also reinforces the group’s presence in the local segment, in both urban and rural zones.

Early in the year, the Catena  store in Ruoms (Ardèche) switched its name to Mr Bricolage. This sales outlet includes almost 900 m² of indoor sales space and 600 m² of outdoor space. The store is currently being extended. These works should be completed in March 2011.

On 3 January, at Pont-de-Vaux in Ain, the store operated under the Les Briconautes name was acquired and the name changed to Mr Bricolage. This store includes a total sales area of 1,960 m² with 1,700 m² indoors and 260 m² outdoors.

Mr Bricolage is continuing its policy to promote local shops in town centres. The group recently opened two stores in Paris, previously operated under the Catena store name.

Enhanced presence of Mr Bricolage in Paris and inner Paris. The group can now boast 6 local stores in Paris and 5 in towns just outside of the French capital.

The group’s policy to re-conquer town centres also applies in the rest of France. After Strasbourg and Cachan in recent months, a second Mr Bricolage store will open shortly in the Castellane district of Marseille.

The store is continuing to reinforce its network of local stores. The current transfer of many small stores operating under the Catena name to the Mr Bricolage name will contribute to this policy in favour of local services. This policy is a real boost for customers living in town centres. They are no longer obliged to cover long distances to reach the trading estates to purchase simple everyday items.

The annual fair of the Mr. Bricolage group in Villepinte boasted record visitor figures. Although initially reserved for Mr. Bricolage, this fair later opened up to Catena stores. This year, Les Briconautes and club partners joined the event. Each store can therefore play their role in a fair where all group store names are welcome. This opening led to record visitor figures. Over two and a half days, a total of almost 7,000 individuals attended the 18,000 m² of the fair. This event also provided the opportunity to open the new hall 7 at Villepinte just after the Maison et Objet fair. This hall is the first ever High Quality Environmental standard building. This year, 358 partners and suppliers presented stands, all slightly more attractive than last year’s contributions, as is the case each year. 426 stores attended the many stands and contributed to the different conferences. Les Briconautes/Les Jardinautes claimed a large area and managed the sound and video system for the event. Mr. Bricolage presented all of its services over 550 m². The fittings service, key copying stand, and range of designer products sold in parallel on Internet were officially launched. This year’s event provided the opportunity for Mr. Bricolage to present complete collections sorted as product ranges or groups: bathroom, cupboard fittings, tiling, gate power, portable electrical tools, safety, plates and handles, letter boxes, major insulation, outdoor wood fittings, paint, light fittings and wallpaper. Many partner stands were also available for visitors. Stores were able to discover the options available in terms of energy savings and reduced consumption. They were able to extend their knowledge of sustainable development options with Recylum (collection and recycling of bulbs), Eco-System (collection and recycling of electrical products) and TFT (Sustainable wood management).

Mr.Bricolage has extended its sales space with the extension of one store and 4 new sales outlets. The five operations represent total additional sales space exceeding 6,200 m² for the store.

The store in Brives Charensac, located in the suburb of Puy en Velay (43), has recently extended its sales space. The store moved just a few metres down the road on this occasion. Indoor surface area increased from 2,800 m² to more than 4,500 m². Outdoor surface area was extended from 200 to more than 1,200 m². This extension provides more room for product display. New products mainly focus on furnishing (cupboards, bathroom fittings, etc.) and decorations, two very popular segments.

The store has adopted an unusual black façade (see photo above). This colour was selected to discretely fit into the protected site (see the web site of the Tourist Office of Puy en Velay), near to the Saint–Michel d’Aiguilhe chapel and Puy en Velay cathedral (UNESCO world heritage). An area of 35 hectares around the “haute ville” is classified as protected.

4 stores change name

The Mr.Bricolage group has recently gained ground with the integration of four new stores: Dinard (22), Nangis (77), Villers Cotterets (02) et Quillan (11). While the first three stores were originally part of the group (2 Catena and one Briconautes stores), the third was acquired from a rival store (Weldom).