Founding of European Retail Association

he working partnership of the European building, DIY and garden store groups has set itself the goal of intensifying international cooperation in the DIY sector. Its first priority is to be the harmonisation of environmental issues and market research in order to achieve comparability of data. Efforts to establish a European DIY retail organisation have been going on for a good five years already.
The BHB and FMB are initiators of the organisation.
In addition to the BHB (Federation of German DIY, building and garden stores) from Germany and the FMB (Fédération des Magasins de Bricolage) from France, companies from five other countries signed the basic guidelines. They were B&Q and Homebase from the UK, Baumax from Austria, Migros and Jumbo from Switzerland, Kesko from Finland and Silvan Kæden from Denmark. Further groups from Italy and the Netherlands intend to follow suit, and Focus has also announced its intention to join. Membership is open to either national associations or individual companies from countries that have no representative trade organisations. To begin with, France will hold the administrative presidency for the first two years.
Pascal Malfoy of Leroy Merlin, C. Bombes de Villiers of BHV and Manfred Maus of OBI volunteered as members of the executive committee. “The branch must get organised globally as quickly as possible,” said Manfred Maus at the constitutive meeting. “Brussels now exercises such powerful pressure that we simply must react to it with as much speed as possible.”