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Home Depot Supply Chain Management

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Home Depot Supply Chain Management
The History of Home Depot
Growth of the Organization
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 first two Atlanta based stores were 60,000 square foot facilities that carried approximately 25,000 different Stock Keeping Units (SKUs) maintained in large, open warehouse style isles (The Home Depot, n.d., The Alfano Group, 2015). According to the Home Depots (n.d.) history bio, the volume of products available dwarfed typical hardware store inventory and variety, while empty boxes stacked on shelves above gave the illusion of carrying an even larger volume of product on a daily basis.
Associates provided the best customer service industry wide, were rigorously trained on product knowledge, and conducted free “clinics” and “how to” demonstrations on common do it yourself projects such as laying tile, and power tool use and operation to name a few (TheHomeDepot, n.d.). The concept combined products, skills, and teaching venues that saved money for the do it yourself customer, as opposed to paying professional craftsman a higher price for easy to master skills and competitively priced products.
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