The world's third-largest home improvement retailer, French-based Adeo Group, opened a 17,000m² DIY store, Leroy Merlin, in Edenvale in Johannesburg on Friday and has plans to expand with smaller stores in shopping malls. Cédric Sennepin, country leader for Leroy Merlin in SA, said: "We are working on trying to find a concept that we can adapt on a smaller scale so [that] we can propose something that can fit into malls in different places in SA." Sennepin said the Leroy Merlin pop-up store at the Stoneridge Centre in Edenvale would give the company "the capacity to learn and make mistakes on a small scale to prepare for the big store. "It gives us the willingness and confidence to go into smaller concept stores . but for the moment we are working on bigger-format stores." The company is already planning to open two more stores in Gauteng in the next year. Leroy Merlin will compete with Massmart's Builders Warehouse and Builders Express, among other home improvement retail brands. W...
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