Description:
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
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