E.Leclerc
supermarket chain based in France
E.Leclerc (informally simply Leclerc, French pronunciation: [ləklɛʁ]) is a French retailers' cooperative and hypermarket chain, headquartered in Ivry-sur-Seine.
E.Leclerc was established on 1 January 1948 by Édouard Leclerc in Brittany. E.Leclerc currently has more than 720 locations in France and 85 stores outside of the country, as of 2019. The chain enables semi-independent stores to operate under the Leclerc brand.
Its own brand ranges come under the Marque Repère and Eco+ banners, as well as a mobile virtual network operator called Réglo Mobile which uses the mobile network of SFR. Some larger hypermarkets have a separate entertainment/multimedia section, under the name of Espace Culturel.
E.Leclerc operates numerous stores and services around France, some near and in cities and towns while most of them are located just outside or in the hypermarkets and shopping centres.
History
In 1949, Édouard Leclerc opened his first store, in Landerneau, in Brittany, on the same model as the self-service grocery store invented by Félix Potin in 1844. Subsequently, in the 1950s, a new brand called E.Leclerc clothing opens its doors and the sixtieth E.Leclerc centre also opens its doors in Issy-les-Moulineaux by Jean-Pierre Le Roch. In 1962, the E.Leclerc Centres Purchasing Group (GALEC) was created. In 1964, the Landerneau store expanded, becoming the first E.Leclerc hypermarket.
The public source identifies “E.Leclerc” as supermarket chain based in France. This brief keeps that definition visible, then builds a research path around Leclerc, supermarket and chain.
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Named sources, stable identifiers and responsible institutions provide the strongest route from overview to verifiable evidence. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 3, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q1273376. VIAF identifies the subject as 141665444. 3 of 7 selected statements include explicit references; 5 carry qualifiers and 1 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1948, 2019, 1949 and 1844.
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This entry incorporates text from “E.Leclerc” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.