The requested URL /blog/?p=2490 was not found on this server. Additionally, a 404 Not Found error was encountered while trying to use an ErrorDocument to handle the request.French chain stores that supply the basic furniture, home furnishings, white goods and electrical appliances and DIY for your home... What follows is a small selection of basic self-service furniture, appliance and DIY hardware chains stores in France. There is no guarantee that anyone will speak English, but once you have found what you need, little more than basic French should be necessary for the transaction. Look in the Yellow Pages or on the stores' own websites for the branch closest to you Hypermarkets, Supermarkets and Department Stores Carrefour: Hypermarket selling white goods, electrical appliances and tools including garden equipment. Self-assembly shelving and basic furniture (as well as groceries and clothing). DIA is Carrefour's discount grocery store. Carrefour also has a finance and insurance division, travel booking, ticket reservation for shows and mobile services
Ooshop: Carrefour grocery shopping online Hyper U, Super U, Marché U: national National chain of "U" supermarkets and hypermarkets for groceries, clothing and electrical appliances. Also their own range of beauty products and a range of low priced basic food products. Géant, Casino: Hypermarket and supermarket chain selling groceries, clothing, garden equipment, electrical appliances and offering holiday and photo services. E Leclerc: Supermarkets and Hypermarkets for groceries, clothing and electrical appliances Auchan: Hypermarket for groceries, clothing, electrical appliances, garden equipment and furniture and toys Monoprix: Groceries, clothing for children and adults, soft furnishings and beauty products Intermarché: Supermarket offering a range of low cost food products. Some regions provide a shop online service Galeries Lafayette: Department store selling white goods, furnishings and electronic appliances, clothes (adult and children) and wedding dresses, travel goods, stationery and entertainment
Furniture and Appliance Shops BUT: Furniture, soft furnishings (curtains, cushions) and appliances including all white goods for the kitchen, dining, sitting and bedroom furniture and home office furnishings. Items sold flat-packed for home assembly Darty: White goods and home appliances including computers and cellular phones IKEA: Swedish-owned furniture shop for all home and home office furniture, soft furnishings, home accessories, flooring, crockery and children's toys. Atlas: Furniture for the entire house and garden, soft furnishings and fitted kitchens and bathrooms Basika: All home furnishings at low-end prices. Sold flat-packed for home assembly. Branches in the Ile de France, Bordeaux and the Provence, Alpes-Maritimes area Fly: Inexpensive furniture and home accessories. Goods include beds and free standing cupboards, out-door furniture, soft furnishings and bathroom and kitchen detail accessories Conforama: Store for furniture and home accessories.
Goods include beds and bedding, tables, chair, cupboards and office furniture BHV: This hyperstore sells appliances, tools and hardware, home decor items, indoor and outdoor furniture, storage units and shelving, lighting, heating equipment and more Building Material, Hardware and DIY Point P: Suppliers of building material, tiles, electricity supplies, hardware, tools, gates, fencing. Over 800 stores around the country Leroy Merlin: Self-service hardware and DIY articles for the home and garden: bathroom and kitchen fittings, lighting, shelves, garden tools and furniture Lapeyre: Not strictly DIY; sells fixtures, fittings (cabinets, doors, windows, stairs) and materials (flooring, tiling, heating systems) for fitting kitchens, bathrooms, home interiors and exteriors, hardware and DIY store. Also offering home installation of kitchens, bathrooms and more. Some products sold online Castorama: Self-service hardware and DIY store with basic domestic hardware and lighting, satellite equipment, self assembly kitchen units, shelving, doors and a wide selection of yachting ropes and clips.
Indoor and outdoor tiles and bathroom fittings and fixtures. Mr Bricolage: Self service hardware and DIY store Ciffreo Bona: Building materials for house construction and renovation, interior and exterior: cement, wood, bricks and concrete, doors, windows, tiles and flooring, plumbing and electrical materials Garden Centres and Farm Suppliers Gamm Vert: Garden supplies, plants and seeds, garden equipment, tools, produce and fertilisers. Wooden palisade and fencing, garden borders and decorative items. Animal feed, bedding, treatments and accessories (horses, dogs, cats, birds and rodents). Also local produce such as honey, oils, vinegars or wine). The more rural branches stock supplies for smallholdings and farmers Botanic: Countrywide chain store with home improvement equipment such as solar panels, garden decorative objects and outdoor furniture, plants, seeds, soils and garden equipment, bio food produce and pet food and accessories Office Supplies and Stationery
Retif: Supplying shop fittings, retail supplies, mannequins, hangers, packaging, scissors and other office supplies. JM Bruneau: Specialists in office furniture and stationery supplies available in bulk. Metro: Cash and carry shop selling office furniture and supplies and wholesale groceries. Top Office: 20 shops throughout France selling office furniture, stationery, ink cartridges and blank CDs/DVDs The French government controls shop sales in France, and the periods are fixed to five weeks during the winter and five weeks during the summer. An additional two weeks of sales are allowed each year, without fixed dates. The winter sales generally begin the first Wednesday of the year; the summer sales usually start last the Wednesday in June.People rarely raise their voices in Jolibois. But tonight I hear a woman shouting very loudly. And when I turn to see what it's all about I am alarmed to discover that the person she is shouting at is me. There are 10 of us having dinner at the house of the Proustian Madeleine on the quaint rue Gambetta, now popularly known as "Gambetta Street" in homage to all les Anglais who have moved in.
The salad and cheese are being passed around the table, and I am concentrating hard, doing my best to follow the quadraphonic French chatter. Very often at a dinner party, by the time I have formulated something almost witty to say, the moment has passed. And that's in English. In French, I am like an unfit rugby forward, chasing the conversation around the pitch, arriving just too late for every ruck and maul. The conversation has turned to Ikea, the blue-and-yellow überstore that is steadily colonising every planet in our solar system. And in one of the more warped epiphanies of my French adventure, I discover that the second-worst sentence you can utter, if you are ever having dinner in Jolibois with Le Grand Mermoz, is this one: "I bought a mattress online from Ikea recently." "It's not true," exclaims Jeanne, Mermoz's wife, clapping her hands. Now Jeanne and I get on rather well, so I presume that she is applauding my skills as a savvy shopper. It hasn't occurred to me that, on the contrary, she is summoning a nuclear air-strike.
Why is everyone staring at me? "Ah, oui, you're right," I concede, before uttering what I now know to be absolutely the worst sentence a fellow can possibly utter in polite company in rural France. "I bought three mattresses online from Ikea recently." Survivors talk of that eerie silence following the flash of an atomic detonation. I experience it now, before I am blown against the wall by the blast of white rage that crashes over me. In France, as in Britain, small shops are dropping like plague victims just now, all struck down by a deadly combination of la Crise and hypermarketitis. I know how important it is to shop locally, because I want Jolibois still to have a beating heart in five years' time, and not merely a draughty, soulless Carrefour ticking away on the edge of town. I just didn't know this also applied to mattresses. Eyes blazing, Jeanne ululates that I should have gone to the furniture warehouse on the edge of town, the one with the fake façade and all the overpriced repro tat for sale.
I jump as she smites the table. "To buy online – and from Ikea – is dégueulasse." Sometimes even difficult words in French are easy to understand, from the hissing derision with which they are uttered. "It is the spawn of the devil," adds her husband. I inquire, wondering if anyone would notice if I quietly crawled under the table. Taken aback as I am by their outrage, I cannot help admiring it, too. I appreciate the sense of community that lies at the heart of such passion. And I like the fact that there are still people, in France and Britain, who believe in spending their money in ways which may not be thrifty, yet are calculated to aid the survival of local livelihoods. I always assumed it was enough that Alice and I sometimes bought our bread, firelighters, some vegetables and perhaps a cut of meat from the little shops in town. But Jeanne's outburst has made me think again. I know that she does all her shopping – all of it – in the small shops of the rue du Coq and that Mermoz runs the family hardware store as much as a service to his customers and a lifeline for his workers as to garner profits for himself.