Castorama on Mickey’s doorstep

This 101st Castorama store, which opened in March 2010 in the Val d’Europe shopping centre around forty kilometres outside Paris, is nothing like any of the chain’s other stores. At least from the outside. The building’s dizzyingly tall neoclassical architecture (late nineteenth century) and broad glass façade quite give it the stature of a grand Parisian department store – and that just a stone’s throw away from Euro Disney. Unlike the cuboid metal shells in blue that the company is normally happy with, this monument of concrete, steel and glass at Val d’Europe accommodates a store of 9 000 m² (70 000 SKUs) spread over four floors. On the second floor: kitchens, storage solutions, outdoor furnishings and gardening. On the first floor: interior decoration from floor to ceiling, and bathrooms. On the ground floor, where the checkouts are located: tools, hardware, electricals, plumbing, heating, timber/carpentry and building materials. On the lower ground floor: a store delivery area and a drive-in collection zone that allows customers to load up bulky items at their leisure. “We have laid great stress on organisational simplicity and the availability of products,” explains store manager Hervé Potier. The store environment, with its wide aisles, generous travelators, spacious fittings, room displays, colourful merchandising just about everywhere and signage up on high, is rather pleasant overall. The Val d’Europe Castorama is banking on its service offer. Since transporting the goods should not deter customers from going on to actually purchase them, the store offers two different delivery services within 3 or 24 hours and also undertakes to dispatch kitchens to their destination within a period of seven days from the date of purchase. Furthermore, there are interactive terminals positioned just about everywhere in the store to allow customers quicker access to the product they are seeking and even to ascertain the availability of the products displayed in the store. No longer do they have to transport the shower screen all the way to the checkout: now all they need to do is enter the code of the chosen product at an interactive terminal, and also include their own personalized secret code. When they reach the checkout they are given a slip enabling them to collect their goods on the lower ground floor. Download: