“Michel-Edouard Leclerc, the real minister of inflation,” declared L’Express in February 2024.
It followed a months-long campaign by the head of Leclerc supermarkets to declare war on rising prices following Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in 2022.
The retail group, founded by Mr Leclerc’s father Edouard in 1949, has always had a reputation for being cheapest at any cost.
Mr Leclerc has been keen to cement that image by positioning himself as a sort of modern-day Robin Hood in various interviews and TV appearances.
Spending power is the number one preoccupation of people in France, he claims, leaning on recent polls, and with the cost of living crisis, it is slowly being eroded.
His high-profile campaign to rectify this saw E.Leclerc gain 700,000 customers from competitors in 2023, securing a 24.1% market share and a €48.6billion turnover.
In the process, however, he has amassed a growing number of enemies, from disgruntled suppliers to riled government ministers. Even the president has taken a swipe.
Attacks over super-cheap baguette
“He is the gravedigger of the bread industry,” said Dominique Anract who denounced, among other things, E.Leclerc’s controversial introduction of a 29c baguette in 2022, suggesting the company resorted to an illegal loss-leader strategy.
Michel Leclerc (as he was then known) was born on May 23, 1952 in Landerneau (Finistère) to Hélène and Edouard Leclerc.
He became Michel-Edouard Leclerc in the mid-1980s – adding his father’s name in tribute, he claimed, but likely to distance himself from his uncle too, also named Michel, following a family feud.
His father had transformed part of his house into a shop in 1949, selling biscuits.
The 16m2 shop was later joined by a 30m2 hangar-like building in the family garden in 1955 and the range of products expanded from biscuits to hundreds of other items, making it one of France’s first supermarkets in the early 1960s.
Read more: Leclerc or Lidl: Which is the cheapest supermarket in France?
Prime minister
Michel-Edouard holds a PhD in economics from the Sorbonne University and his thesis was supervised in 1978 by economics professor and former prime minister Raymond Barre – quite a feat considering he reportedly only scored one out of 20 in his maths Baccalauréat.
He was briefly a freelancer for several newspapers, including Libération and the consumer magazine Que choisir, and was heading towards a career as a teacher.
“At the time, I went back to Brittany on my motorbike every fortnight. I used to fill up at the Leclerc centre in Laval. There, young employees believed in Leclerc and in the social role of retailing,” Mr Leclerc told the Revue Internationale et stratégique in 2015.
In an interview with France Inter, he added that employees had made him feel guilty that he was not working for the company whose name he bore.
“Spending time with them, I realised that the retail sector was not only the best observatory of social behaviours from top to bottom, bankers to producers and consumers, but that it also has a real effect on product selection and behaviour,” he added.
Face of supermarket since 2006
He eventually joined the family firm on an interim contract in May 1979, tasked with developing an import company to make fuel supplies to supermarkets truly independent.
He soon carved a name for himself fighting for access to protected sectors, and was a fierce opponent of the Lang law, campaigning, unsuccessfully, against fixed-book prices and limits on their discounts.
From 1979 onwards, E. Leclerc has expanded to offer a range of new services, including energy, clothes, mobile subscriptions, concert tickets, car rentals and finance.
Michel-Edouard succeeded his father as president of the retail group in 2006.
However, he does not have any shares, nor does he own any supermarket, as the company works as a retailers’ cooperative of 544 shop owners.
Instead, Mr Leclerc acts as the company’s sales representative and lobbyist, media appearances and nurturing relationships with politicians.
Read more: French supermarket chain to sell cheaper fuel on summer weekends
Campaigner
He continues to challenge any legislation that goes against his commercial interests.
Former MP Grégory Besson-Moreau, author of the Egalim 2 law aimed at rebalancing relations between retailers and their suppliers, recalled a visit from Mr Leclerc for a recent BFMTV documentary.
“With a beaming smile, Mr Leclerc told me: 'It is pretty simple, I will – out of transparency and to protect my consumers – explain why the prices of Coca Cola packs rose by 10%. We will put your face on our billboards and explain it to them.'”
The law was eventually passed in October 2021, guaranteeing better wages for farmers.
However, earlier this year Mr Leclerc was indirectly accused by President Emmanuel Macron of bypassing it through European regulations.
It was suggested this had played a part in the agricultural crisis that was then gripping the country. Indeed, E.Leclerc shops were targeted by farmers during their angry protests in February.
For his part, Mr Leclerc has not ruled out a career in politics, telling LCI in March that he thought about it "all the time".
He also writes opinion and observations about France on his personal blog.
Connexion readers may be especially interested in his take on British expats. In August 2005, for example, he reflected on how they were repopulating the Périgord region, writing: “English people revive our villages. They plant flowers, trees and save our heritage. Housing prices soar but it benefits locals as well, doesn't it?”
E.Leclerc was listed the sixth most popular retailer in France in 2024, up three places from 2023, according to a survey by EY Parthenon.
The number one spot was claimed, for the second year in a row, by discount chain Action, proving perhaps that Mr Leclerc has been right all along – price is paramount, the lower the better.
What they say about him…
“He triggers a little nerve in the consumer by saying 'I'm going to offer you low prices'. Obviously, everyone is attracted by this kind of rhetoric. It's the hallmark of populism: it's not based on truth or the common good, but on the passion and emotions of individuals. So it works very well.”
Renaud Dutreil, former secretary of state from 2002 to 2007 and now an entrepreneur
“Michel-Edouard is relaxed, very open and tolerant, but at work he's a merciless killer."
Unnamed manufacturer quoted in a profile by Libération newspaper in 2003
"Rockstar or Linkedin influencer, who really is Michel-Edouard Leclerc? Probably both. A chameleon, in fact, who blends effortlessly into any landscape. From the shop floor to the keyboard. That's probably what these few hours of his life tell us.”
Retail journalist Olivier Dauvers is impressed by how Michel-Edouard segued from opening a new Leclerc supermarket – to a rapturous reception – to picking up a Linkedin ‘Number 1 influencer’ accolade in the space of just a few hours.
