How Leroy Merlin is reinventing its stores
Make It is the DIY workshops inside Leroy Merlin stores. Matthieu Degeorges is behind these “do it yourself” workshops, now found across the group’s stores.
At first, noticing the explosion of Pinterest and of “do it yourself”, Matthieu and a colleague want to create a kind of “Marmiton for DIY”. The aim would be to win a new, more urban and amateur clientele for Leroy Merlin.
They start by testing the idea with a few online tutorials. The first results are not conclusive and creating content turns out to be complicated.
After a year and a half, the project has not taken off.
The two intrapreneurs then join a new acceleration programme offered by Leroy Merlin’s innovation unit: Start.
They adopt a Lean Startup approach and change the way they work. Among other things, the team spends days interviewing potential customers in the streets of Lille to better understand their needs.
“I want to make things myself”, the people interviewed tell them. “But I don’t know how”.
Matthieu then thinks of creating a workshop with tools and a coach available to help these people who want to make things but don’t know how.
The project is launched in Paris, in the Marais, in May 2018 as a pop-up store: Make It by Leroy Merlin.
To make this project happen, Matthieu brings on board suppliers, stores and Leroy Merlin sales advisers from all over France. Running a workshop becomes a new job within Leroy Merlin.
Customers show up. The experience is a success. But this store is standalone, and to scale up, the experience has to be repeated by integrating the workshop into Leroy Merlin stores …
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