Blank: Early competitors believed Home Depot's business model would fail
Arthur Blank · Live Episode! The Home Depot: Arthur Blank · Dec 28, 2017 · at 19:36
Arthur Blank, co-founder of The Home Depot, discusses the reaction of competing retail executives to the company's early big-box home improvement format in 1979.
0:00 / 0:21exact quote · 21.8s
720p mp4 · rendered on demand · StarZero watermark
“Every competitor came into our stores and visited us and said, I mean, these, I can't use bad words here because this is like kind of a live radio thing, but these, ah, whatever you want to call us, they're crazy. The stores are much too big. Prices are much too low. They have way too much product and stock. They have too many services. I mean, the math isn't going to work.”
quote is from the automated transcript, cleaned for reading: filler sounds and stutters are removed, nothing is rephrased. names can be misheard (the analysis reads context, assessments check outside sources). how →
More from Arthur Blank
Blank: NFL anthem protests address social injustice, not military disrespect
“And I will tell you, there are 1750 players in the NFL, and I will tell you, these players have great respect for the military, and so it's not about the military to them. It's just that becomes an opportunity, a platform for them to speak about their concerns…”
Blank: NFL players should stand respectfully for national anthem
“Having said that, I mean, I think that players should stand, and should stand respectfully for the national anthem.”
Blank: Staying at Home Depot under Bob Nardelli would have been miserable
“And I was sure happy I wasn't there during the six years that he was there. Ah, so, ah. That, that, that would have been the worst time in my life.”
Blank: Home Depot concept arose by defining an uncompetitive retail model
“Bernie had said, well, you know, if we were ever to leapfrog our own business, Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers, what kind of home improvement center store could we not compete against? And so we said we could never compete against the big warehouse, no fril…”
Blank: Home Depot avoided planograms so every new store improved
“Really, at HD, we had a five year plan, we had a one year budget, we had all of that, but we focused on every single store, and our plan was that each store had to be better than the last store we opened up. So we didn't have any plantograms. We didn't have an…”
Blank: Handy Dan was the most successful US home improvement chain
“Well, that company, Handy Dan Home Improvement Centers, was, and we operated kind of a traditional model, 40,000 square feet, 40% gross margin, 40 associates on the floor and it was by far the most successful chain of Home Improvement Center. Stores in the cou…”