Inside Home Depot - Hardcover

Roush, Chris

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0071340955 ISBN 13: 9780071340953

Publisher: McGraw-Hill, 1999

Synopsis

"Reads like a novel, yet serves as a how-to guide for creating a customer culture and marketing strategies that wow Wall Street...I recommend this book as priority reading for all retail executives." Kurt Barnard, President, Barnard Retail Trend Report and Barnard's Retail Consulting Group.

Admirers, competitors, industry and Wall Street analysts alike are intrigued with the question of what makes Home Depot so special. What, exactly, does this giant do that so clearly distinguishes it from the competition? How does Home Depot culture and customer service work? And, most importantly, what lessons can every business learn from the Home Depot example? INSIDE HOME DEPOT takes you behind the scenes to discover the secrets of success of this retail giant how, in just twenty years, Home Depot has not only changed the way hardware is sold, Home Depot has also elevated the superstore concept to a new level of success, inspiring both admiration and fear in the retail community. Relying on inside access to Home Depot's training programs, interviews with key employees both past and present, and meticulous investigative journalism, Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist Chris Roush presents the first uncensored book about how this company has become so successful, and isolates the practical lessons that readers can apply to any industry.

About this title

Review:

Chris Roush nails down Home Depot in this unauthorized portrayal of the retailing titan. Inside Home Depot shows how cofounders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank over the past 20 years built their business from two stores in Atlanta into 650 outlets--the world's largest home-improvement retail chain. Roush, a veteran business reporter, finds that much of Home Depot's astonishing financial success comes from its strong "bleeding orange" culture. Home Depot fosters loyalty among workers with the best pay in the industry, generous stock-purchase plans, and first-rate training in home improvement and customer service. Incredibly enough, Blank, the company's chief executive, still spends a third of his time personally training employees--unthinkable for any other CEO of a multibillion-dollar company. Roush also examines plenty of defects. Home Depot was so macho that it could be a house of horrors early on for its women employees: the company paid $104.5 million to settle sexual-discrimination lawsuits.

The author points out that the company's hegemony is threatened by competitors like Lowe's and community activists who fear that Home Depot means suburban sprawl and schlock. Nevertheless, Roush predicts that Big Orange, which is experimenting with new home-design and rural stores, will become even more ubiquitous in the future:

Home Depot has only just begun to build itself into a retail power. With each customer that enters its orange-colored doors and walks its vast aisles, buying do-it-yourself items to repair roofs and fix leaky faucets, Home Depot hammers away.

Business managers, investors and customers of Home Depot will enjoy reading this inside story about one of America's top-10 retailers. --Dan Ring

About the Author:

Pulitzer Prize nominated journalist Chris Roush is currently a business reporter for Bloomberg News. He became an expert on the inside operations of Home Depot while a reporter for The Atlanta Journal-Constitution where he covered Coca-Cola and Home Depot, as well as the whole retail industry. It was his reporting on consumer issues that won him a Pulitzer Prize nomination in 1993 by the Tampa Tribune. He was also nominated for the Livingston Award by the Atlanta Journal-Constitution for his reporting on business issues. Roush has also worked for Business Week and the Sarasota Herald-Tribune.

About this edition

• Publisher: McGraw-Hill
• Publication date: 1999
• ISBN 10: 0071340955
• ISBN 13: 9780071340953
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 266