E.Leclerc expands in second hand market

French supermarket group E.Leclerc strongly believes in the second-hand market: next year, it wants to sell second-hand goods in about a hundred additional branches.

Great success

The first ‘Leclerc Occasion‘ had a trial run last summer in Roques-sur-Garonne (near Toulouse, in southern France), and turned out to be a big hit. Today there are already 25 Leclerc stores with a second-hand corner and the supermarket chain wants to expand that number to 130 next year.

The principle is quite simple: customers bring the items they wish to sell to the shop’s service desk. If they come to an agreement on the value of the object, the customer receives that amount in vouchers from the shop. The vouchers can also be used in other parts in the store, not just the second-hand corner.

The second-hand items are displayed in a separate corner in the stores. According to French website Linéaires, the margins are very high for the shop. Moreover, stores get access to brands and products that they do not normally sell, such as Thermomix kitchen robots or Lidl’s Silvercrest products.