What Do We Do | LEROY MERLIN South Africa

What We Do

LEROY MERLIN stores are DO-IT-YOURSELF hypermarkets established near urban areas, providing retail self-service and sales assistance.

There are four main departments (do-it-yourself, building, decoration, and gardening) offering a range of products tailored to customers’ needs at the best price possible.

LEROY MERLIN also provides many specially tailored services in each country to facilitate the purchasing, set-up, and follow-up needed for customer projects: estimates, orders, delivery, vehicle rental, after-sales service, as well as installation, DIY workshops, and specialized bookshops in some stores.

LEROY MERLIN’s success is based first and foremost on the belief that satisfied customers are those who receive the answers they need to make their home-improvement project a reality.

With 30,000 to 60,000 products available in each LEROY MERLIN store, it is important to guide the customer to the right choice. LEROY MERLIN’s professional expertise is founded on three key elements :

Customer advice

Though the LEROY MERLIN store model is self-service retail, it is important to assist the customer in every aspect of his or her project, during and after the purchase. In the store, LEROY MERLIN employees are more than just sales people, they are, above all, sales advisers who offer each customer proper advice: advice on which solution to choose, how to use or install a product, etc. This guidance takes place both before and after the purchase: a website filled with ideas, do-it-yourself tips, installation service, and more.

Skills development

All employees begin their work at LEROY MERLIN with an in-store training course lasting several weeks, so as to better know the business and the customers. Training is an important component for each LEROY MERLIN company and constitutes a significant investment. The LEROY MERLIN sales advisers also regularly complete other training with real-life scenarios, because the best way to give helpful advice on how to install tiling, for example, is to have done it oneself!

Supplier partnerships

LEROY MERLIN product managers work with suppliers to improve products. In addition to performing quality controls, LEROY MERLIN takes into account customer feedback about both the products the store offers and about customers’ home environments.

LEROY MERLIN has implemented a quality-control approach on its entire in-store offer which defines its commitments to respecting quality standards. These commitments are included in the specifications that are given to suppliers.

Audits are carried out periodically on key suppliers and systematically on those who furnish the LEROY MERLIN store brands. An environmental dimension was added to these audits in 2010.

Each LEROY MERLIN employee is made aware of the company’s quality standards:

Product managers, in the choice of products, when product ranges are being developed and
Sales teams, during training, to guide the customer to the product best-suited to his or her needs and to pass information on to management about products needing improvement.

Innovation: turning good ideas into products

LEROY MERLIN is committed to constantly improving its products. Whenever a customer has a need that cannot be met with what is available on the market, the banner sets out to provide a solution, developed with the store’s supplier partners. This solution takes the form of new products, a collection of existing products that complement one another to fulfil the need, or coordinating product ranges.

LEROY MERLIN offers products that best correspond to the needs of residents and homeowners by offering supplier brands or brands that the company itself helps develop.

To satisfy the wide variety of customer needs, LEROY MERLIN tailors its product offer to the local environment, proposing different price ranges and:

Relatively universal products for which there are often store brands available:

Products used around the world, adhering to local standards
Products with universal potential and local requirements or needs: based on the country’s climate, safety standards, etc.

Products that are more specific, where the store brands have had to adapt:

Products that differ on a regional scale so as to be in line with housing styles or local standards, such as slate roofs in France,
Products which will be heavily purchased in a very specific way and in relation to the store’s specific location, such as near the shore or in the centre of a major city.
LEROY MERLIN takes great care to offer customers the best choice of products and solutions at the best price. Products are chosen in accordance with local needs, bearing in mind cultural or regulatory specificities in the store’s country.

The LEROY MERLIN offer includes the following:

Easily-recognised, famous-name products
Store brand products: Along with the other ADEO banners, LEROY MERLIN has contributed to designing and developing 15 store brands so as to offer the best quality/price ratio to its customers. These brands are created with each market’s needs in mind, wherever LEROY MERLIN is present
Lesser-known products that meet the specific needs of local residents.

From the world’s largest international suppliers to the smallest local suppliers, LEROY MERLIN’s marketing and distribution policy involves a vast spectrum of manufacturers.

Technical Conveniences