Headquarters, factories, stores, these places are the starting points of some of the greatest French industrial and commercial sagas. In this summer series, L’Express opens the doors to emblematic sites that have marked the country’s economic history.
EPISODE 1 – Renault: the true story of Building X, where it all began
Advertising, as they used to say then, was in full swing. In the mailboxes of the surrounding towns, thousands of promotional leaflets announced the event. One of them ended up at Michel Faure’s parents’ house. The naturally curious teenager, who was running close to his 18th birthday, did not want to miss this. On June 15, 1963, he got on his bike from the family home in Morsang-sur-Orge, in Essonne, and headed for the town center of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois. Three kilometers later, he reached a brand new 450-space parking lot, already full of Peugeot 403s and Citroën 2CVs, where a huge building with an imposing frontage stood: that of France’s first hypermarket, stamped Carrefour.
On site, the crowd of new customers is already compact, while a myriad of personalities have made the trip. The founders of the supermarket chain created in 1959, Marcel Fournier, haberdasher in Annecy, and the brothers Denis and Jacques Defforey, wholesalers in Ain. But also the novelist Françoise Sagan, patron of the store, the mayor and the deputy. The speeches given, the priest blesses the place. Then the visit begins. “It was exceptional, we had never seen that”, says Michel Faure.
Inside, on 2,500 square meters, 15,000 items, including 3,500 food items, 10 to 20% cheaper than in local shops, all self-service. “When this more direct sales method appeared, it allowed us to escape the influence of the grocer. It also encouraged impulse purchases when we saw the shelves, an increase in sales volumes thanks to trolleys that allow us to pick up more products without effort, and ultimately an extension of the surface areas”, underlines Franck Cochoy, professor of sociology at the University of Toulouse-Jean Jaurès. In the immense aisles, customers wander among a plethora of offers: a butcher’s section where a craftsman works the carcasses in front of customers, a dairy, a fishmonger – the first in the city… The atmosphere is festive. At closing time, after the 2,500 curious visitors have passed through, there is almost nothing left on the shelves.
A risky bet
For Marcel Fournier, the coin fell on the right side. The day before, the boss of Carrefour was still saying: “Tomorrow, either I’m rich or I’m ruined.” The location chosen in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois, south of Paris, proved crucial. “It’s one of the rare hypermarkets located right in the center of a city. Almost everyone came there on foot. The novelty also attracted residents from neighboring towns. It was a center of life,” says Jean Ooghe, mayor of this town of 38,000 inhabitants – 18,000 when it opened – from 1971 to 1990. The bet was risky, to say the least. No distributor had yet taken the plunge to open a store of such a size, four times larger than those of the time.
The term hypermarket would not be used immediately, it would be invented in 1966. Customers would go to “Carrefour large self-service store”. It was in the United States, in Dayton in the State of Ohio, that Marcel Fournier and the Defforey brothers discovered the megalomania of distribution a few months earlier. They attended a seminar by Bernardo Trujillo, later presented as the “pope” of the sector. Back in France, they were convinced that the two 850 square meter supermarkets that they had opened in Annecy, one of which was at the crossroads of five streets, hence the name given to the brand, were not enough.
Room for innovation
Over the years, the Carrefour in Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois has established itself as an essential place of passage, but also of experimentation. “This is where we tested the first computerized checkouts. I also participated in the initial discussions on unbranded products, which would later become established,” recalls Gabriel Binetti, store manager from 1975 to 1978, at the age of 35. Every week, the local manager received a visit from Marcel Fournier, whose offices were located a stone’s throw away, in Evry. “He was incredibly simple. His questions were endless: about customers, the commercial behavior we should adopt with them, innovation. He relied on the fundamentals to seek out novelty,” continues the now retired employee.
As soon as he joined the brand in 1969, as an employee at the Montesson store, Gabriel Binetti became friends with the founders. Jacques and Denis Defforey even took him to Stockholm to see the materials sold outdoors, with one idea in mind: “We wondered how to offer cut wood and cement in small counters located in the parking lots”. An entire career dedicated to Carrefour, with a credo: “To those who say “We can’t do anything anymore”, I replied “We can still do everything”.
Around the hypermarket, the municipality has fallen into line with modernity. As soon as he arrived at the town hall, Jean Ooghe undertook to give the district a new lease of life. Starting with the keep, a tower listed as a historic monument since 1923. “This area was a bit forgotten from an administrative point of view. We rebuilt everything around the city centre. There were about twenty individual plots next to the Carrefour, it took the municipality twenty years to buy them back. On each of them, we reintroduced gardens”, says the councillor. The only downside was the complaints from the neighbourhood about the incessant comings and goings of delivery trucks. “I tried to calm things down, but a store in the heart of the city is inevitably a problem”, acknowledges Gabriel Binetti.
A model losing momentum in the 2000s
Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois would in any case launch the hypermarket model that would reign in the French suburbs for several decades, disrupting consumer habits, before experiencing a decline in popularity from the 2000s. “The hypermarket suffered from the dual competition of the relocation of points of sale to city centers and the joint development of drive-throughs and home delivery,” explains sociologist Franck Cochoy.
Other, more societal factors have precipitated this relative disaffection. “The concern to protect landscapes at the entrance to urban areas, the fight against artificialization of soils, the desire to move away from the automobile for environmental reasons, and even the questioning of limitless consumerism in the name of sobriety and the reduction of each person’s carbon footprint are all leading to a certain decline in hypermarkets,” the specialist continues. Carrefour management assures that “the hypermarket is not ancient history. Five years ago, everyone said that this model was dead. The prediction was completely wrong: the promise of the hypermarket remains very strong, it is a popular promise, with an exceptional variety of products, at the lowest prices, served by promotional dynamics.”
Today, the cradle of Sainte-Geneviève-des-Bois has more than tripled in volume to reach 8,500 square meters. More than 50,000 items are now listed there. Last year, the establishment celebrated its 60th anniversary in the presence of Alexandre Bompard, the CEO of the group, which has become sprawling: 14,000 stores, installed in more than 40 countries, for a turnover of 94 billion euros. Michel Faure, a customer from the very beginning, continues to shop there, four times a week. The septuagenarian had of course been invited to the ceremony. “What can you expect? By dint of it, you become known…”
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