Dmitriy Anderson, CIO and head of e-commerce and marketplace strategy at Leroy Merlin, admits that profitability keeps him up at night, especially when working on a new business like the Leroy Merlin Product Marketplace. Anderson says the online marketplace, which launched three years ago and now has more than 500 third-party sellers, recently hit a major milestone by breaking even for the first time in January 2024. “That's pretty impressive, but ensuring those numbers keep growing and the marketplace remains profitable can feel like a nightmare,” he says. Especially given the scale of competition in the space, with giant brands like Amazon offering a huge variety of products while smaller, more specialized retailers often struggle to compete.
Anderson says that over the years, the retail industry has had to quickly adapt to the rise of e-commerce and omnichannel. These market changes have not only changed how retailers sell, but also what customers expect from their shopping experience. With a marketplace approach, France-based Leroy Merlin works with third-party sellers to provide customers with all the products that were previously unavailable in stores. “For comparison, Leroy Merlin in France used to carry about 200,000 products, and now we offer those 200,000 plus another 3 million,” Anderson says. That means that people who shop for kitchens at Leroy Merlin also have access to a wide range of appliances, crockery, cutlery, tables and chairs from a variety of sellers on the Leroy Merlin site.
Creating a marketplace
Anderson, who is now helping the company establish its brand in South Africa, says launching the marketplace in the country has been an interesting journey. It began around the time the global pandemic lockdown was implemented in 2020. Naturally, the company implemented budget cuts, and as a result, there was talk of the marketplace project being cancelled. But Anderson countered, arguing that with everyone forced to stay at home, the global lockdown was the perfect opportunity for people to finally embark on home improvement projects. “People were stuck at home waiting for the world to open up again, staring at the peeling paint and cracks in the walls that they had promised to fix themselves,” he says. “As a result, our e-commerce numbers increased 20-fold from 2019 to 2020.”
