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PROFILE – The youthful simplicity of the CEO of Leroy Merlin France has captured attention. Identified internally by the Mulliez family, she is tasked with boosting sales by focusing on the energy renovation market.
When she visits the field, Agathe Monpays wears the uniform of Leroy Merlin’s sales staff: a black and green polo shirt representing the brand she has led since September 2023. Like on this Friday, April 25th, when she meets Challenges at the Villeneuve-d’Ascq store (North), a short walk from the headquarters of France’s leading DIY retailer. This has been her habit since she took over as head of the French subsidiary. She feels somewhat at home here. “I manage this company as I managed my first sector in Valenciennes, I do the same job, satisfying the customer,” she admits, having already visited half of the 145 stores in a year and a half.
With energetic strides, the young woman walks through the aisles despite her rounded belly signaling another child on the way. She greets each customer she meets as well as all the staff members, whom she calls by their first names. Thus, Agathe Monpays combines energy and approachability. A stark contrast with the gloominess of DIY sales due to a sluggish real estate sector. In this regard, Leroy Merlin, like other specialized retailers, suffered, with a turnover of 9.6 billion euros in 2024, down by 3.2%.
Her image also sharply contrasts with the secretive culture typical of the Mulliez group, which has owned the chain since 1981. Even though it took her more than a year to speak to the media to present her strategy. At 30, Agathe Monpays leads a company that is faltering for the first time and is seeking new momentum.
Moving Mountains
Contrary to what her age might suggest, her appointment is the culmination of a well-marked career path. An internal rise that began in the group when she was still a student at Iéseg, the business school of the Catholic University of Lille. She joined as an apprentice in the men’s fashion brands owned by the Mulliez family, such as Brice and Jules, and quickly climbed the ranks.
In 2016, she applied for the position of head of the lighting department at the Leroy Merlin store in Valenciennes. Her former boss, now retired, saw “something different” in her. “I won’t say more, it’s make or break,” he cryptically told her future mentor, Aurélie Fromont. And it worked out.
Her mentor remembers this slender figure capable of moving mountains: “She could single-handedly set up a display area of 100 light fixtures.” Agathe Monpays spent four years in Valenciennes, won over by this proximity to the customer. Then, at just 25, she took the helm of the new Leroy Merlin store in Tourcoing, where she boosted sales.
“Damn, she’s brilliant!”
But for this native of Armentières who has never left her native North, destiny accelerated when, in 2022, pregnant with her first child, Philippe Zimmermann, the president of Leroy Merlin, offered her the direction of Greece and Cyprus. In a whirlwind, she organized a rapid trip and ended up accepting. “Here I am in Athens with my three-month-old son in my arms and my dog on a leash,” she smiles.
To immerse herself in the local culture, she took up Greek and conducted 200 individual interviews, “half in Greek and in English.” And, presto, after eighteen months, the subsidiary turned a profit for the first time after seventeen years of presence. “It was my first major personal and professional uprooting, and not working in your mother tongue forces you to be pragmatic,” she modestly suggests to explain the feat.
Agathe Monpays imagined staying there for ten years. That was not to be. In spring 2023, her boss visited her in Athens. “Are you sitting down?” he began before offering her the direction of Leroy Merlin France and its 30,000 employees. “It didn’t make sense at first,” she almost naively admits. “Why me?” To convince her, her predecessor, Thomas Bouret, traveled to Greece. For two days, he presented her with the darkening prospects, the challenges of energy renovation, and the sharpening digital competition.
After three weeks of reflection, Agathe Monpays decided to return, convinced that her place was indeed there. She booked her return ticket to France, landing in August 2023. Just in time to start a tour of the stores to “get the pulse of the company.” So much so that at her first public speaking event in September, she impressed the brand’s executives. From the back of the room, a discreet but eloquent comment was heard: “Damn, she’s brilliant!”
A Leader’s Profile
It must be said that her promotion at just 28 years old did not go unnoticed. Busy in Greece, Agathe Monpays did not see a wild rumor swelling in France about her ties to the Mulliez family. She gritted her teeth. “Working kept me protected from what was happening, I don’t clutter my mind with bad spirits.” This animosity, however, surprised Philippe Brochard, former CEO of Auchan: “I was struck by the jealousies at her appointment where many retail dinosaurs still think seniority equals skills.”
Today, the Mulliez family still feels compelled to emphasize that they have appointed “the right person in the right place.” Young, certainly, but with an atypical personality that does not bother with pretense. Tired of waiting for her client to come to Paris and eager to meet her, the president of the advertising agency BETC, Mercedes Erra, decides to go to her. They meet at a “nondescript” brasserie in Villeneuve-d’Ascq for a free exchange. “Mercedes Erra doesn’t impress her, it’s extraordinary this form of immense simplicity she can have,” marvels the flamboyant advertiser who shares with Agathe Monpays a rapid pace of speech. And sharp wit.
“She’s effervescent: she can talk about a topic while sending an email and making a phone call with the same intensity,” recalls her first mentor at Leroy Merlin, Aurélie Fromont. Which also gives cold sweats to her director of communications, Marc Renaud, when she decides to completely change a speech. “You have to keep up,” he sighs.
Uniting a Team
Now, it’s up to her to drive the revival of the chain’s sales. Her first decisions illustrate her pragmatism with a “streamlined” executive committee, reduced from ten to four members, “to facilitate decision-making.” But her major project is that of energy renovation and its 30 billion euros per year earmarked by the government’s recovery plan, half of which is for private housing. “It’s the market of the century and the puzzle of the century,” she announces as a law wanted to exclude the large specialized stores from the MaPrimeRénov’ scheme.
Finally, on May 21, a final parliamentary ruling allowed their reinstatement. A relief. Before the government decided to suspend this scheme in the second half of 2025, due to numerous requests and frauds. A sudden brake for energy renovation.
Born to Catholic teacher parents active in local and associative life, Agathe Monpays leads an ordinary family life, renovating her home on weekends, a former chicory farm, with her partner, a wood craftsman. Values that the young CEO holds at the heart of the company she sees as a team to unite, especially in times of crisis.
Dual Leadership
In April, she decided to launch Vision 2035, a process born in 1995 that engages all employees to project themselves into the brand for the next ten years. She also did not hesitate to get involved in the centenary festivities of Leroy Merlin in 2024. “It was a historic moment, after a complicated year, which I insisted on maintaining in a unifying spirit,” she justifies.
Yet, these festivities, which cost 10 million euros, were not to everyone’s taste. Especially after a voluntary departure plan that affected 200 employees: “We were overstaffed, I reduced central services to give more room to the stores,” she asserts. With, as a result, spirits heated by a company “that might have lost its soul,” leaving “full powers” in the hands of its parent company, Adeo, it is murmured internally.
CGT union delegate, Imane Haddach, also questions the role that Philippe Zimmermann plays alongside the CEO. His status as Similar Posts
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