The central question

Centralism in France is a centuries-old tradition. The monarchy created it, the republic definitely didn't do away with it. One look at the street map or railway map is enough to see: in France, all roads lead to Paris.
This applies more than ever for the economic power between the capital and the province, as it is still called here, which is extremely unbalanced - despite complaints from the regions, the cities, the economy, despite the yellow vest protests. In the Île-de-France region with Paris at the centre, almost a third - 31.0 per cent or EUR 709 bn (figures from 2017) - of the French gross domestic product is generated, even though only 18 per cent of the French live here. GDP per inhabitant is accordingly high: EUR 58 300 lies 70 per cent above the nationwide average and is more than twice as high as in nine of the 13 regions in metropolitan France, i.e. without the départements overseas.
With this in mind, it is even less surprising that what the regional reports in DIY International, which draw upon the statistics department of the Dähne Verlag publishing house, are often diagnosing about France holds true: in the capitals and conurbation areas there are significantly less DIY stores, measured by the number of inhabitants, than in the rest of the country which the French also like to call "la France profonde", literally: "deep France".
13 DIY store sales channels were included in the observation for these statistics. Operators are the three big groups: Adeo (Leroy Merlin, Bricoman, Weldom), Kingfisher (Castorama, Brico Dépôt) and Les Mousquetaires (Bricomarché, Bricorama, Brico Cash), as well as Groupe Mr. Bricolage (Mr. Bricolage, Les Briconautes) and the three chains Brico Leclerc, Brico Pro and L'Entrepôt du Bricolage. The numbers on locations were gathered in October 2019 on the basis of the companies' websites on the Internet.
This means: not all DIY stores in France are included in this observation, not least because due to the... let's say: lack of willingness by French DIY headquarters to provide information makes research extremely time-consuming. However, the big players - the market leaders according to sales rankings - on the DIY market are depicted which enables a realistic overall scenario.
And that looks like this: a whole 8 per cent of the somewhat more than 1 900 DIY stores in France (including overseas) are in the capital region Île-de-France. The ratio of inhabitants per store is therefore dramatically unbalanced: in this region…