Electro Dépôt Brand Guidelines: The Mulliez Family’s Warehouse Stores for Low-Cost Appliances

A low-cost format launched from inside Boulanger.

Electro Dépôt was created in 2003 inside the group that runs Boulanger. According to the Spanish trade journal Alimarket, writing in November 2018, Boulanger’s management asked Pascal Roche, an executive with a background at Auchan and Boulanger, and Philéas Réant to set up an entry-price store format, somewhere between a cash-and-carry and the warehouse model of Costco or the Belgian grocer Colruyt. The first store opened on 13 May 2004 in Bruay-la-Buissière, in the Pas-de-Calais. That gap explains why sources give different years: Le Journal des Entreprises wrote in April 2021 that the chain was founded in 2003 in northern France by Pascal Roche, who drew on the low-cost stores then spreading in the United States, while Vozpópuli in 2015 and Electroguide in 2026 dated it to 2004.

The owner has stayed the same. Electro Dépôt belongs to the HTM group, which also runs Boulanger, Krëfel and Hifi International, Le Journal des Entreprises reported, and HTM is controlled by the Association Famille Mulliez, the family association whose businesses also include Auchan, Decathlon, Leroy Merlin and Kiabi, according to Alimarket. Within the group, Electro Dépôt is the low-cost banner. In 2015 Vozpópuli listed HTM’s other businesses at the time, among them the Boulanger stores, the appliance installation and repair service Lokeo and Sourcing & Création, the company that designs products for the group. Its head office is at Faches-Thumesnil in the Nord, La Gazette France reported in November 2025. On its own website the company sets its name in capitals, ELECTRO DEPOT, while page titles use the accented form Electro Dépôt.

Pallets, short ranges and own labels.

The format has changed little. In 2015 Vozpópuli described stores of 1,500 to 2,000 square metres, with goods placed on pallets or left in their cardboard boxes, no special discounts or sales periods, and savings made on delivery, packaging and advertising. In 2018 Le Petit Journal in Madrid described warehouse stores with a tight range of about 2,000 references and large stock available on the spot. The company’s page for its twentieth anniversary says the concept has not changed: no promotions, low prices every day, through regular arrivals of goods, short ranges and savings on shop decoration and transport.

Own labels are central. Alimarket counted eight of them in 2018, including Valberg, Tekyo, Edenwood and Bellavita, alongside branded goods. In July 2026 Electroguide reported, citing GfK sales-panel data released by the company, that Valberg had become the most-sold washing-machine brand in France by units in 2025, and noted that the ranking counts units rather than sales value. The site also named HighOne as another of its labels.

The chain has added second-hand and online services. Le Journal des Entreprises reported in 2021 that it had sold refurbished goods since 2014 and had launched Reconomia that March, a site where independent repairers resell used appliances collected by its delivery teams. Online sales had grown sharply in 2020, the paper wrote, while the stores stayed at the centre of the model. A separate banner, Electro Des Pros, serves trade customers, according to the company’s website.

Electronics chains in Southern and Eastern Europe.

The consumer-electronics chains of France, Poland, the Czech Republic, Romania and Greece sell many of the same televisions, phones, laptops and washing machines, so their identities do much of the work of telling them apart. The shop sign, the logo and the colour scheme are the parts each company controls and publishes itself, on its corporate site, its store fronts and its online shop, and they are the starting point for this series.

Store formats vary from chain to chain. The companies in this series describe formats ranging from large out-of-town stores to smaller shops in city centres and shopping centres, alongside their online shops. Some run every store themselves; others mix directly run stores with affiliated stores owned by independent retailers.

Ownership shapes each brand as well. Some chains are listed companies, some belong to larger retail groups that run several banners, and others are independent retailers joined together in buying associations such as Expert, founded in 1967, whose members trade either under the shared name or under their own banners.

Corporate pages add their own layer: histories of founders and owners, own-label ranges, loyalty schemes and advertising claims, each presented in the company’s own words. In the guides that follow, those claims are attributed to the companies that make them, and the colours and typefaces shown are our own unofficial interpretation rather than any chain’s official specification.

From the Nord to Belgium and Spain.

Growth has been steady. Vozpópuli counted 64 stores in France in November 2015, the month the chain opened its first store outside France, in Belgium. In Spain a subsidiary was set up in April 2016 and its first two stores, at Alcalá de Henares and Parla near Madrid, opened on the same day that October, Alimarket reported; a third followed at Alfafar, near Valencia, in May 2018, when the company spoke of reaching 50 Spanish stores in five to ten years. Le Petit Journal, writing for French readers in Madrid that year, noted that the Spanish stores could order French products such as raclette sets and computers with French keyboards, and that each store had a French-speaking contact. By April 2021 Le Journal des Entreprises counted 97 stores: 83 in France, 10 in Belgium and 4 in Spain.

The company says it passed 101 stores in its twentieth year. In November 2025 La Gazette France reported a network of 124 stores — 106 in France, 13 in Belgium and 5 in Spain — with about 1,800 staff, as it prepared a store of 1,470 square metres at Melun for March 2026; in July 2026 Electroguide put the total at more than 130. In 2025 the company published a statement denying reports of large-scale closures and listing new stores opened that year, among them Barentin in March and Montceau-les-Mines in April. It says 84 per cent of its store directors were promoted from within, according to La Gazette France. On its anniversary page the company also says each store supports a local association and that staff have one day of volunteering within their working time.

For a design guide, Electro Dépôt shows how a low-cost retailer can make the warehouse itself the brand. Compare Boulanger, its sister chain in the HTM group, and Darty, another French electronics retailer. For this guide we use a rust, a carton beige and an ochre accent with a condensed sans, an unofficial interpretation; no product or logo is reproduced.

Keep Electro Dépôt’s identity on hand — save it to a board in the Made Good inspiration library.