Merzak Meddah GEM Alumni, has been managing Electro Dépôt, the Mulliez group's discount electrical appliance chain (€1.5 billion in revenue), for the past year. His career path is a perfect example of social mobility and is the subject of an interview on Challenges.fr.
It all began in his senior year of high school, when a teacher told him about preparatory classes. Coming from a modest background—his father was a warehouse worker and his mother a cleaning lady—he seized the opportunity and enrolled at GEM thanks to a scholarship from the Aréli association. “It gave me a taste for hard work,” he says.
Passionate about numbers, he started at PwC, then moved to Kingfisher (Castorama), before joining Electro Dépôt in 2017 as accounting director. Quickly promoted to CFO, he took over as CEO in 2024.
“I've never liked numbers for numbers' sake: behind them lies the reality on the ground,” he explains.
Today, he is driving the brand's international growth and decarbonization, while preparing to set up an association for equal opportunities. “Careers are made up of opportunities. I was able to seize them... and I would like others to be able to benefit from them too.”
Read the full interview with Guillaume Echelard on Challenges.fr
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