Home Depot's Management

Home Depot has clearly set itself up to be successful in the recent upswing in the housing markets. Their technology upgrade has proven to be successful in keeping stores stocked and employees more engaged with helping the customers.

Lowe’s (LOW) and Home Depot (HD) are competitors in the every growing market of Home Improvement. The following analysis of each company will examine the home improvement industry, the individual companies, their operating philosophies, their financial strengths or weaknesses, and a final conclusion on which company would be a better long-term investment.

Home Depot’s corporate-level strategy is one of internal growth. This conclusion was reached based on the increased focus that Home Depot has placed on growing its existing online and traditional retail operations. Between 2016 and 2018, Home Depot is expected to invest approximately four billion dollars into improvements in its online and physical retail locations in order to make both work more synergistically and grow sales (Petro, 2016). Home Depot hopes that these investments will continue to increase sales at both its physical and digital retail locations, thereby growing the company without adding significant numbers of physical locations.

More savings. More doing. Now that’s the power of Home Depot (homedepot.com). “ The Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, along with investment banker Ken Langone and merchandising guru Pat Farrah” (corporate.homedepot.com). The founders envisioned a “one-stop shop” for the do-it-yourselfer. The first Home Depot opened June 22,1979 in Atlanta, Georgia. The first stores had around 60,000 square feet that dwarfed the competition stocking over 25,000 SKUs much more than any other hardware store at the time (corporate.homedepot.com). As a facade to look like there was an abundance of merchandise The Home Depot would stack empty boxes on the shelves. Home Depot has come a long way since their humble beginnings.

Home Depot is the fastest growing retailer in the U.S. by some accounts. It has a fascinating history of innovation and entrepreneurship. The company had some difficulties in the mid-2000s that some attribute to cultural clashes. However, during this period the company was able to take full advantage of the housing boom. Yet when the bubble burst, Home Depot was forced to claim substantial losses. Despite these loses Home Depot has weathered the storm fairly well and is in prime position to take advantage of an economic recovery; if it ever comes.

The home improvement retailer was hit with a double whammy last year: a housing market downturn and customer service problems that have plagued the company for years. Also on the company's to-do list: preventing patrons from fleeing to competitor Lowe's, which has been chipping away at HD's lead. In-store makeovers were a start, and the company also has been seeking skilled workers to replace inexperienced part-timers who'd previously been hired to help cut costs.

The Home Depot knows that they must stay on top of technology and management must be able to organize this function in a way that surpasses the competition, pleases the customers, and keep the employees satisfied.

Lowe’s is continuously being threatened by Home Depot in losing market shares. It is a constant battle; Lowe’s and Home Depot are expanding substantially in attempts to take over territory claimed by the other as well as unclaimed territory. The biggest weakness for Lowe’s is its lack of customer service. Customers are leaving Lowe’s in search of credible, knowledgeable service which is found at Home Depot.

Lowe’s is part of an oligopoly type market structure. An oligopoly is a situation in which a particular market is controlled by a small group of firms with at least two firms controlling the market. The main key to behavior in an oligopoly is that companies must take into account what other companies will do. In perfect competition, firms are price-takers and can ignore other firms (Basic Economics, 2009). The home improvement retail stores are an industry that includes Home Depot, Lowe’s, Builders Square, and in other states, Menards.  Smaller companies have to try to compete with them to stay in business.

Home Depot is also known for its high productivity. The company likes to maximize the efficiency of the space it uses. International Home Depot stores in 2014 averaged $297 earned per square foot. Lowe’s international stores only averaged $280 per square foot (Trefis Team, 2015). The growth of Home Depot’s e-commerce sales is another testament for its productivity. Home Depot’s had online sales of 500 million in 2009. E-commerce sales have grown to over 5 billion (Birkner, 2017). In 2007, the company’s store were in charge of stocking and replenishing inventory. The staff spent as much as 60% of their time working with inventory instead of working with customers. To solve this problem the company created algorithms that autonomously kept track of the inventory for the management (Bond, 2017). The company also created 18 rapid deployment centers from 2007 to 2015. These centers move products between stores in a more efficient rate utilizing a for just-in-time replenishment model. Lowes also has rapid deployment centers, but has only built 15 in the same amount of time. The high productivity of Home Depot is one of the reasons it continues to outperform its competition.

The home improvement sector of the economy is large with two major players in the industry and with many smaller local and regional competitors. These two major competitors are Home Depot and Lowe’s. These two companies account for over $110 billion in total sales each year. Even though sales have gone down over the past few years due to the downturn in the economy they have not gone down nearly as much as home sales and this is due to more people deciding to do more home improvements to their own home then buying a new home. Both of these companies have been able to keep up sales and increase them year over year by improving current

The Home Depot (NYSE: HD) is a home improvement, construction products and services retailer operating over 2,000 big-box stores in the United States and abroad. The Home Depot was founded in 1978 by Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank with the vision of one-stop shopping for do-it-yourself (DIY) customers, installation services for do-it-for-me (DIFM) customers and competitive products for the professional market. Their DIFM installation programs include products such as carpeting, flooring, cabinets, countertops, and water heaters. In addition, the company provides installation of various professional products like generators and HVAC systems.

Home Depot and Lowe's believe in big warehouse space, an informal atmosphere and low prices. They are able to offer the lower prices to consumers due to their purchasing power. Inventory differs depending on the story type, home centers typically sock more lumber and building supplies, as their biggest customers are contractors. They pay their floor employees minimum wage, and keep overall costs down by keeping them as part time employees.

However, in 1999, Lowe’s recorded very high sales growth alongside its expansion in preparation for the new millennium. From 1999 to 2001, Lowe’s began to assert itself as a worthy competitor for Home Depot, embodied in its significantly better margins and turnover ratios despite the recessionary economic environment. This improvement in ratios is indicative of positive change in the management of the

One of the differentiating factors of Home Depot was that it incorporated within its members a major aversion to any kind of beauracracy and hierarchy. It was a usual practice at the stores to ignore all kind of paperwork that was sent to them by the headquarters. They undervalued such directives to the extent that they would throw these papers in the waste basket or mark them with “BS” stamp and send it back to the headquarters. They believed that all this was a waste of time of the managers and they had more important things to address to at their stores, the most important of them being : satisfying the