Moderate growth in France

The French DIY market grew by 3.4 per cent to 16.25 bn euro in the year 2001. The increase came to 1.2 per cent after currency adjustments. The market volume excluding garden products amounted to 14.8 bn euro. These figures are included in a press release from Unibal, the French manufacturers’ association based in Paris. The best performance was recorded by the DIY superstores with sales increased by 5.6 per cent to 10.32 bn euro. This means that their market share increased by 2.3 per cent to 63.4 per cent. The supermarkets and hypermarkets suffered a 2.1 decline in sales. They had a turnover of 1.53 bn euro, which corresponds to a market share of 9.4 per cent (minus 5.3 per cent). Unibal reports sales growth of 2.6 per cent to 3.43 bn euro for the building materials trade, where market share remains unchanged over the previous year at 21.15 per cent. The other marketing channels for DIY products performed least well, reporting a 6.6 per cent decline in turnover to 0.95 bn euro.