"The customers have changed a lot"

Frédéric Sambourg: It's true that the approval for retail areas has been very important in recent years. However, we noticed a strong decline in 2015: approved development of retail areas was down seven per cent compared to 2014; at national level or in the departments there was a 41 per cent drop in plot approval by the building planning authorities.
One explanation for this is the extremely strong trade competition and by the fact that some areas are completely saturated when it comes to trade especially in the DIY store sector. Furthermore, the public authorities are against land sealing and as a result are implementing rigorous urbanisation regulations, which consequently drive up the development costs for the companies in question. In recent years, no less than four laws pertaining to the sealing of areas have affected the industry. These regulations have pushed up the cost of building a store by almost 30 per cent.This is reflected in the degree of activity: in mathematical terms the DIY store revenues on the same areas have been constant for years, but when one looks at the absolute market figures trend, that also includes expansion and new openings, then the sales revenues in 2015 increased by 1.5 per cent.
This will undoubtedly continue, mainly because nobody knows what the exact share of e-commerce in the DIY store revenues will be in the future, which will reduce the need for square meters even more.

That depends on which neighbour you are talking about. The French market is very much equally shared between trade and retail business. The connection between the two is almost non-existent, even though it's the retailers' dream to win over the professional customers and the players in the wholesale trade would love to open up their business to a wider clientele.
In fact, the French customer has changed a lot in recent years: Our clientele has become more feminine and the younger consumers don't share the interest in DIY as their predecessors. That's why the DIY stores need to smarten up their act, even their product range, in order to attract the DIY newcomers. They have been pushed into developing new services, for example, seminars and workshops in order to better help and support…