Courtesy of The Home Depot
- Home Depot first opened its doors in 1979.
- Founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank launched two different stores in Atlanta.
- Home Depot struggled to attract customers at first, but it ended up finding its groove.
Home Depot is one of the biggest names in home improvement retail today.
But the company didn’t get that way overnight.
Jennifer Wyatt, Home Depot’s company historian and archivist, spoke to Business Insider about the early years of the company. Wyatt has worked at Home Depot for over 20 years. She also assisted founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank in fact-checking their book "Built from Scratch."
Read more: Here’s what Costco looked like when it first opened in 1983
She said that when Home Depot first opened in 1979, there was "nothing else like it at the time" in the home improvement space.
"At the time, if you had a big project, chances were good you’d have to go to at least two places to get everything you needed," she said.
The idea for a one-stop shop for home improvement caught on, Home Depot underwent swift growth, and the company went public in 1981. But Wyatt said that the early days of the business were a "struggle."
Let’s go back in time to the summer of 1979 to take a look at the early days of Home Depot.
Home Depot would never have come about if its founders hadn’t been fired during a corporate bloodbath.
Courtesy of The Home Depot
"We wouldn’t be here if Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank, our two founders, hadn’t been fired from a company called Handy Dan," Wyatt said.
Handy Dan was one of the first home improvement retailers in the country. And in the late ’70s, the Los Angeles-based company was in the midst of a brutal corporate struggle. Marcus managed the company as president and chairman of the board, and Blank served as the CFO.
But despite their high-ranking titles, the pair weren’t independently running Handy Dan.
Courtesy of The Home Depot
Sanford Sigiloff — who went by the nickname "Ming the Merciless" after the Flash Gordon villain — was CEO of the Daylin Corporation, which held a controlling interest in the company.
In 1978, despite the retailer’s financial success, Sigiloff fired Marcus and Blank.
The two execs decided to establish ‘a kind of store that didn’t exist at the time.’
Courtesy of The Home Depot
Wyatt said that the clash at Handy Dan left the two Home Depot founders both "devastated."
But Marcus had a big idea in mind.
"Bernie had a vision for a kind of store that didn’t exist at the time, and that was a one-stop shop for the do-it-yourself-er," Wyatt said.
The two decided to launch a home improvement retail outfit that would be significantly bigger and cheaper than most competitors.
See the rest of the story at Business Insider
See Also:
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- Here’s what it’s like to shop on Wish, the $8.7 billion site that sells Chinese goods at rock-bottom prices
SEE ALSO: Home Depot is embarking on a massive hiring spree as retail’s war for talent rages on
Source: Business Insider – feedback@businessinsider.com (Áine Cain)