Fewer stores in Belgium

No major industry dynamic can be gathered from the overall number of DIY stores in Belgium. On the contrary: compared to a survey which was carried out by the Dähne Verlag publishing house two years ago, the number of locations has even dropped from 517 to 513.
The decline is primarily attributed to closures by two sales channels: the Briko chain, primary sales channel of the Dutch Maxeda group, now only has 137 stores and thus seven less than two years ago, and the number of HomeHandy stores in the Meno group has gone down from 57 to 49. Mr. Bricolage and Gamma each have one store less.

But there have also been gains, in particular for the Belgium retailer Hubo. It now has 149 stores and thus twelve more than two years ago. At Brico Plan-It, also in the Maxeda group, the number of stores has risen by one to twelve.
When looking at the geographical distribution of the stores across the country, the strikingly low DIY store density in the capital of Brussels of course continues to stand out. Here there is one store less than in 2018, the quotient of inhabitants per DIY store has risen to over 44 000. In the national average (which includes Brussels) this is 35 000. The second weakest density is in the region of Antwerp in which 1.8 mio people live and thus more than in Brussels with 1.2 mio inhabitants and in which there are 26 000 persons to one DIY store. The lowest value and thus the highest density of locations is achieved by the Walloon region of Luxembourg with 12 000 inhabitants per store.