The Home Depot

Home Depot’s retail strategy is one of reasons for its fast growth and continued leadership in the home improvement retailer industry. Its focus on speed, efficiency, and quality has made it one of the largest retailers in the world. Home Depot focuses on being a leader in “product authority.” Walmart and Costco are leaders

The Home Depot (Ticker: HD) is the world’s largest home-improvement retailer along with being an American Fortune 50 company. The company operates 2,259 retail building supply/home improvement “warehouse” type stores all across the United States, Canada and Mexico. The Home Depot has over 340,000 team members and is based in Atlanta, Georgia. The average store size is just over 100,000 square feet along with an additional 24,000 square feet set aside for seasonal gardening.

From 2007 to date, Frank Blake took over the management of the company. His era has seen tremendous expansion and diversification in the range of products. By the end of 2012, Home Depot had revenue of $70.395 billion. At the same time, the company had a net income of $3.883billion with an operating income of $6.661 billion. The company has a diverse workforce in its 2,248 locations. The stores are in the United States, China, Mexico, Puerto Rico, and Canada. The company retails in

The Home Depot mission statement reads as follows: “The Home Depot is in the home improvement business and our goal is to provide the highest level of service, the broadest selection of products and the most competitive prices. We are a values-driven company and our eight values include the following: excellent customer service, taking care of our people, giving back, doing the “right” things, creating shareholder value, respect for all people, entrepreneurial spirit, and building strong relationships.”

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.

I believe that Home Depot has done an excellent job at reaching its goals in the past ten years. They have been able to expand their market by aggressively opening several store locations and using a clustering strategy. In doing this they have become a market leader and they have also been able to keep their SG&A expenses down by eliminating redundant expenses by spreading them out between stores close in proximity to each other. Home Depot is facing a few problems in order to continue reaching its stated goal(s) of becoming a global leader and expanding their existing market. There are a few established business that are in direct competition with Home Depot such as Lowe's, their number one competitor, and other companies such as Eagle Hardware & Garden of Seattle, who has been preparing for the intense competition

They currently operate approximately 2,248 stores in the U.S., including the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico and the territories of the U.S. Virgin Islands and Guam. There are stores in ten Canadian provinces, 85 stores in Mexico, and eight stores in four Chinese cities. The Home Depot has 48 specialty stores-including, 34 Expo Design Centers, five Northern California Yardbirds stores, two stand-alone Design Centers, and seven-unit HD Bath remodeling business (The Home Depot, 2011).

Home Depot is the world's largest home improvement retailer operating in 45 states, Canada, Chili and Puerto Rico. Home Depot stores aim to serve both do-it-yourselfers and professional contractors with home improvement superstores carrying between 40,000 and 50,000 different products. Home Depot has also been listed as one of Fortune's most admired specialty retailers for the past six years. In order for companies to succeed in the competitive current marketplace they must consider not only the bottom line and their investors but also their impacts on the community, their employees, and their customers. Home Depot was founded on the idea that treating employees well is an important responsibility. Home Depot believes employees that are

Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement retailer, placed the fourth-largest retailer in the United States, and the fifth-largest retailer in the world. Part of Home Depot success comes from the slogan “do it yourself”. For example, rebuilding home projects, decorating your house or improving your backyard. The company focuses on customer service, having high trained employees, to be able to share their knowledge. Home Depot has an estimated brand value of $ 23 billion.

Home Depot 's target market is individual homeowners/small contractors. Even though the traditional ideology is that cost leadership and product differentiation business strategies are mutually exclusive, Home Depot was successful at using a combination strategy. First, Home Depot optimized the cost leadership strategy by offering low and competitive prices to its customers by emphasizing higher sales volumes with lower margins, while instituting a high inventory turnover. Home Depot successfully offered a warehouse product strategy to the individual consumer for the first time. Previously, this type of price discounting was only available to professional contractors who earned product price

The Home Depot Inc. was founded in 1978 and is the world’s largest home improvement retailer and the second largest retailer in the United States. The sales for the fiscal year 2000 were $45.7 billion, compared to $38.4 billion in fiscal 1999. As of January 2001, the company was operating 1,134 retail stores in forty-seven states, six Canadian provinces, Puerto Rico, Chile and Argentina.

Home Depot (TheHomeDepot, n.d.) began as a two store operation in Atlanta, GA in 1979. The concept was the brainchild of Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, with inspiration from investment banker Ken Langone and well know merchandising expert Pat Farrah. They envisioned a one stop, do it yourself store that carried most of the products needed to do common home care projects.

The Company operates retail stores and call centers, and conducts online retail operations. Home Depot is considered a service based business. Home depot depends on people and the client experience and it also targets different markets in general.