Home Depot – US Home Improvement Regional Demand
Trends – 27 October 2021
Disclaimer
The information, material and content contained in this transcript (“Content”) is for information purposes only and
does not constitute advice of any type or a trade recommendation and should not form the basis of any investment
decision. This transcript has been edited by Third Bridge and may differ from the audio recording of the Interview.
Third Bridge Group Limited and its affiliates (together “Third Bridge”) make no representation and accept no liability
for the Content or for any errors, omissions or inaccuracies in respect of it. The views of the specialist expressed in the
Content are those of the specialist and they are not endorsed by, nor do they represent the opinion of, Third Bridge.
Third Bridge reserves all copyright, intellectual and other property rights in the Content. Any modification,
reformatting, copying, displaying, distributing, transmitting, publishing, licensing, creating derivative works from,
transferring or selling any Content is strictly prohibited.
Specialist:
Title:
Moderator: Nyree Hinton (NH), Third Bridge Sector Analyst
Christopher Cornell (CC)
Former Manager, Online Category Experience at The Home Depot Inc
Agenda:
1. Demand environment for home improvement
2. Competitive overview – Home Depot (NYSE: HD) vs Lowe's (NYSE: LOW), highlighting move into
home décor in light of increasing competition from Amazon (NASDAQ: AMZN)
3. Supply chain disruptions and impact of labour issues
4. 2022 sales growth outlook and dynamics across DIY vs pro customers, highlighting promotional
divergence and margin potential
Contents
Q: What trends have you noticed in US home improvement? What categories are stand-outs for demand? 3
Q: You mentioned Home Depot and Lowe’s entering the home décor category. How much of this is a
reaction to Amazon entering Lowe’s and Home Depot’s traditional categories vs them actually considering
the category as first-movers?
3
Q: Could you describe Amazon’s impact on some of the categories that Lowe’s and Home Depot traditionally
4
play in?
Q: Could you outline the differences across price and category assortment for Home Depot and Lowe’s?
Q: How important is brand loyalty in the home improvement segment and how does that compare to other
industries? In food, people will buy Cheetos over a private label offering, but might not consider branding
when buying a product such as a hammer.
4
5
Q: How has the pandemic exacerbated pain points throughout the supply chain? How well has Home Depot
fared in getting supply to market vs Lowe’s?
5
Q: How consistent are the supply chain dynamics you outlined across the categories within Home Depot? 6
Q: What are your thoughts on Home Depot’s performance around pain points that can’t be optimised, such
as labour and trucking?
Q: What are the advantages or disadvantages of Home Depot’s regional footprint? Are there markets where
it should be playing in that it isn’t currently?
Q: What are your thoughts on Home Depot’s e-commerce capabilities and approach to the home delivery
trend, highlighting dynamics such as shipping and delivery time? Does it get to a point where certain
products are too cost-prohibitive to deliver?
6
6
7
Q: How is Home Depot thinking about pricing in this high-demand environment? What promotional activity
have you noticed? Have some of the categories fallen out of favour, leading to more promotions, or have
prices stayed relatively steady on a gradual pace up?
7
Q: What have you noticed around Home Depot’s consumer profile? Where do you think the company does
well around consumer loyalty?
Q: How big of a holiday season do you think Black Friday will be, given that it seems many companies are
pulling promotions forward, given the supply chain issues?
Q: You outlined the efficiency throughout Home Depot’s supply chain. At what point are the company’s
hands tied because of the supplier’s inability to meet that demand?
7
8
8
Q: How do you think that supplier-retailer relationship has evolved or transformed, when you have Amazon
trying to post the same products as Home Depot and Lowe’s?
9
Q: You mentioned Home Depot may have a better assortment than Lowe’s with one particular vendor. Could
9
you give us its strengths in categories across paint, flooring, bath and kitchen?
Q: How might Home Depot consider pricing across DIY vs pro users? Who is more price-sensitive?
Q: How does Home Depot communicate between DIY and pro customers? They all have different factors
that will keep them loyal to the brand.
9
9
Q: How does marketing change for pro customers between basic and bigger-ticket items? What are the
trends across smaller items that you could order off of Amazon vs spending over USD 1,000 at Home Depot
per item?
10
Q: What do you think about the prospects for margin increase? Is it about pro customers with the bigger
tickets, but who will go for the lowest-priced item?
10
Q: You mentioned pro customers typically check inventory online, which would determine if they’ll come in
or not. What are your thoughts on repeat purchases from the pro consumer? Alternatively, despite having a
contractor’s discount, is it a one-time purchase here, a one-time purchase elsewhere and then they’ll come
back?
11
Q: How do you think Home Depot fares with the labour issue around store associates? Many companies
from every sector are having a hard time keeping employees and hiring people. How has Home Depot built
higher employee loyalty?
11
Q: Could you discuss SKU rationalisation in this high-demand environment, whether it’s building out what
you offer online vs in store? What can Home Depot expand into, given it seems the company is in almost
every category?
11
Q: What are your demand expectations over the next 1-2 years? It seems new home builds are continually
growing, but it seems Lowe’s or Home Depot are focused on R&R [repair and remodel].
Q: How does the home garden segment into demand for Home Depot or other home improvement stores,
given home ownership isn’t as high as it used to be?
12
12
Home Depot – US Home Improvement Regional
Demand Trends
Transcription begins at 00:00:01 of the recorded material
NH: Welcome to Third Bridge Forum’s Interview entitled Home Depot – US Home Improvement Regional
Demand Trends. I am Nyree Hinton, and I will be facilitating today’s Interview with Mr Christopher Cornell,
former Manager, Online Category Experience at Home Depot.
Christopher, before we get started with today’s Interview, please state I agree or I disagree to the following
statement: You understand the definition of material non-public information and agree not to disclose any
such information, or any other information which is confidential, during this Interview.
CC: I agree.
NH: Could you introduce yourself and your background?
CC: I have a background in e-commerce, starting with eBay in 2012, from 2012 to ’16. I worked for Home
Depot from 2016 to 2018 in the capacity of a Supply Chain Manager/Consultant to vendors, and then I worked
for Home Depot on their site merchandising team for Homedepot.com from 2018 to 2020, and most recently I
worked for about a year for Riteaid.com on their third-party marketplaces and delivery business.
[00:01:25]
Q: What trends have you noticed in US home improvement? What categories are stand-outs for demand?
CC: In thinking about the home improvement industry, there are some very dominant players, but I would say
that there’s lots of ability for companies to gain or lose market share. The two major players are Lowe’s and
Home Depot, and then there are additional regional players such as Menards or Ace or Tractor Supply, and
each company has its own value proposition based on its size and distribution, but one of the most interesting
things about the industry is the most recent foray into home décor. Both Lowe’s and Home Depot have gone
after the category of home decoration. If you think about it, that’s pillows, linen, towels, bed sheets, and this is
in direct competition to the Wayfairs, the Amazons and the Overstocks of the world getting into this space, and
Home Depot and Lowe’s seeing margin opportunity as well as revenue opportunities in home décor.
[00:03:06]
Q: You mentioned Home Depot and Lowe’s entering the home décor category. How much of this is a reaction
to Amazon entering Lowe’s and Home Depot’s traditional categories vs them actually considering the category
as first-movers?
CC: I think it’s a little bit of a three-part answer. One thing is that they’re always looking to how to compete
with Amazon in places where Amazon is doing really well, so that being that home furnishings aspect. The
second thing is the gross revenue and margin opportunity. Linens and textiles and pillows have higher
margins than, say, tools, so when you get into that business, you can be more profitable. The third thing, I
think, is just the growing nature of e-commerce itself. Previously, you have limited space in the store at a
Home Depot or a Lowe’s, and so you’ll want to have your first value proposition being tools, building
Private and confidential 3
materials, etc, for your customers. Home décor is a growing category but still small, and so you wouldn’t want
to dedicate very much of your store to that, but because dot-com has the ability to have a larger assortment
offered online, it gives companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s the opportunity to compete with Amazon and
Overstock by offering a larger assortment of home decorations online and not take up valuable shelf space in
their stores.
[00:05:13]
Q: Could you describe Amazon’s impact on some of the categories that Lowe’s and Home Depot traditionally
play in?
CC: A little. I managed four categories while I was at Home Depot, that being paint, flooring, bath and
kitchen. Most of those categories don’t translate to selling well on a place like Amazon. One of the places that
does sell well is a place like faucets, and, from that perspective, what you saw, the impact to the Home Depot
business from Amazon getting into those categories was a race to the bottom on price. What you saw was
Amazon definitely plays the price game with the Buy Box and companies winning the Buy Box to capture
demand. Usually, the company with the highest rating and the lowest price wins the Buy Box, and so then that
puts a lot of pressure on Home Depot to match that price, to not lose out on market share to its customers.
[00:06:49]
Q: Could you outline the differences across price and category assortment for Home Depot and Lowe’s?
CC: The price between Home Depot and Lowe’s is going to be very similar. The difference might be Home
Depot might have a larger assortment and collection with one vendor vs another. That’s coming down to what
I would call exclusives. A vendor might be the same across both Home Depot and Lowe’s, but the product in
and of itself, a certain faucet may be exclusive to Home Depot, or another faucet may be exclusive to Lowe’s, a
faucet design or a kitchen sink design. Therefore, that’s how those brands try to compete against each other,
but, on the very surface level of something like price and assortment, they’re going to be very similar.
NH: How do they stack up across private label offerings?
CC: I actually don’t know very much about Lowe’s private label business, but I know that in the last four years
it’s been an increased, or four or five years, it’s been a huge focus for Home Depot. They’ve really invested a lot
in their private label business to consolidate the brand and then grow their assortment within those brands.
On a lot of earnings calls over the last five years, there’s been increased focus on how Home Depot’s private
label brands have positioned themselves. I believe that at one point in time, they had something like 10 or 15
private label brands, and they’ve really pared that down to five or six key private label brands, so you’re
looking at Hampton Bay in the lighting and vanity categories. You’re looking at Glacier Bay in the faucets and
kitchen categories. Home Decorators Collection is the private label brand for the home décor categories, and
then Husky is the private label for tools.
The main reason for focusing on this is Home Depot realised it can do a much better job of controlling the
supply chain in terms of forecasting the amount of units that they were going to sell, as well as the quality of
the material that they’re using to produce these items, so that was 100% within the control of The Home
Depot. The other thing I think that’s really key is the assortment aspect, so when they consolidated down to
these six key brands, they really built out the assortment, and where previously, private label had been used as
an entry-level price point and quality level, they really started to build out the good, better and best strategy.
Yes, you did still have entry level, say, for Hampton Bay, but then they also went after the better pricing and
even started to experiment in the best pricing, and they started to capture, or have been capturing, market
share based on that expanded assortment and I think have been very successful with that strategy.
Private and confidential 4
[00:10:52]
Q: How important is brand loyalty in the home improvement segment and how does that compare to other
industries? In food, people will buy Cheetos over a private label offering, but might not consider branding
when buying a product such as a hammer.
CC: Yes, I think 100%, and I’ll actually contradict your food aspect. One of the best brands in grocery stores in
the southeast is Publix private label brand, and, from a food perspective, that’s one of the most trusted brands
on the shelves in grocery stores in the southeast, and I think that translates to the way that Home Depot use its
private label. They really want to build something that’s quality. They still have their entry-level cheap
hammer, per se, but when you think about Husky, they also have higher-price-point hammers that are much
better and much more well-constructed. That Husky brand has now come to mean something in the industry,
where you can compare, say, a Husky tool against a DeWalt or Milwaukee power tool and feel confident that
it’s going to stand up, because Home Depot has put a lot of resources and energy behind building the brand.
It’s no longer along the lines of let’s put together the cheapest materials and sell it for the cheapest price and
call it private label, but it’s also about building that brand to mean something and gain customer equity.
[00:12:49]
Q: How has the pandemic exacerbated pain points throughout the supply chain? How well has Home Depot
fared in getting supply to market vs Lowe’s?
CC: I’m not really prepared, necessarily, to speak to how The Home Depot did it vs Lowe’s, in terms of how
Lowe’s fared. I know that when we were in the height of COVID, Lowe’s actually posted higher growth than
Home Depot did. It’s on a slightly smaller base, but Home Depot did a very, very good job, and does a very
good job, of setting itself up for being in a COVID situation. One of the things that it does a really good job of is
how it’s constantly thinking about how to get the goods from the vendors to the suppliers faster, and I think
that enabled it during COVID to manage the high demand on the product. One of the things that I’m thinking
about is when I worked on the supply chain consulting team, we worked a lot on how do you floor-load trucks
going from distribution centres to the stores. What that looks like, floor-loading is where you manually put
each box into the back of the truck and stack it, like playing Tetris, as opposed to putting 30 pallets in the back
of a truck, and that does a couple things. One is there’s a lot of space around the pallets that’s unused, so when
you floor-load it and you Tetris it in there, you get fuller trucks going to the stores, so that means more
merchandise that’s able to get out to the stores per truckload.
The second thing is, if you think about it from a store operations perspective, when the pallets are unloaded off
that 18-wheeler in the back of the store, they tend to sit for 1-2 days in the back, in the shipping and receiving
of the store. That is because it takes the store associate, or a team of store associates, to take those items, find
the headcount, unwrap the pallets, figure out where each item is going and then put those back out onto the
aisle. What it did was, when they floor-loaded the trucks, it created this forcing mechanism that in order to get
the boxes off the back of the truck, they had to be taken off the back of the truck and immediately figured out
where do they go. They’re taken off the back of the truck, they’re put in a shopping cart or in a bin and then
taken right out to the aisle where they’re going to go right onto the shelf, as opposed to sitting on the shipping
and receiving dock of the store for 1-2 business days before being unwrapped and taken to the aisle. That gets
the items to the shelf faster, and if you don’t have the items on the shelf, you can’t sell it to your consumer.
Private and confidential 5
[00:16:24]
Q: How consistent are the supply chain dynamics you outlined across the categories within Home Depot?
CC: It’s across every category where it’s physically possible to do that. There are some categories, say, where
there are flatbed deliveries for lumber or long items or oversized items. That’s not going to be able to be
possible, but, for every category that can fit in the back of a truck or ride on a pallet, they’re making that
decision to make each item ubiquitous as much as possible. One of the other things I was thinking about that
enabled Home Depot to react to COVID, and potentially even to the current supply chain issues with import
goods sitting in ports for a really long time, Home Depot instituted a strategy where most goods coming off a
container ship go to what they call an import DC that’s maybe a couple miles outside of Long Beach. They go
from that import distribution centre to the regional distribution centre, and then from the regional
distribution centre to the stores, so an item coming off a ship is having to spend 1-2 days in an import
distribution centre before figuring out where it gets sent in the rest of the company, in the rest of the country,
excuse me.
One of the things that The Home Depot did was they realised, “Why can’t we just take that container that’s
coming right off the ship, send it straight to the regional distribution centre and bypass that import
distribution centre?” Especially if you have a full container-load of product that’s going to end up at a
distribution centre anyway, why not just take it directly from the manufacturer straight to the distribution
centre? That was one of the things, where 70% of the merchandise prior to this was flowing to the import DC
and 30% was going to the regional DCs straight off the ship. Instead, after this initiative, 70% was going
straight to the DCs and only 30% was going to the import DCs. If you think about this situation, say, in the
Port of Los Angeles or the Port of Long Beach, what’s happening is every other supplier has a much longer lead
time because they’re stuck, waiting to be unloaded, but also they’re having to spend anywhere from 3-4 to a
week in that import DC, whereas Home Depot’s are going straight out to that regional DC 70% of the time.
[00:19:20]
Q: What are your thoughts on Home Depot’s performance around pain points that can’t be optimised, such as
labour and trucking?
CC: I’ll give the example of labour in the back room. That example of labour costs to unwrap pallets, that’s lost
money right there, as opposed to if you think about it in a more lean operating system, the labour is unloading
the merchandise directly from the back of the truck, putting it in an aisle bin and then taking it right out to the
aisle, as opposed to having to wait for a forklift to take those pallets off, position them, reposition them and
then find a bunch of headcount to unwrap those pallets and sort them at a later time. That’s a huge savings on
store labour.
[00:20:31]
Q: What are the advantages or disadvantages of Home Depot’s regional footprint? Are there markets where it
should be playing in that it isn’t currently?
CC: That’s a good question. What I would imagine is it’s something similar to maybe what other people are
trying to think about in terms of what they’re calling dark stores. In a case where, and I’m sure that The Home
Depot is thinking about this, although I wasn’t privy to it at the time, let’s just say they don’t have any stores in
North Dakota, I’m sure they do but let’s say there aren’t any stores in North Dakota, they would set up a
distribution centre there and be able to deliver to their customer from that distribution centre, from an online
sale, and be able to service their customer that way, as opposed to setting up a full-fledged store in that
regionality. You’re not incurring the overhead costs of rent as well as labour to man the store. You’re just
having to manage a, quote unquote, dark-store distribution centre to capture that demand.
Private and confidential 6
[00:22:19]
Q: What are your thoughts on Home Depot’s e-commerce capabilities and approach to the home delivery
trend, highlighting dynamics such as shipping and delivery time? Does it get to a point where certain products
are too cost-prohibitive to deliver?
CC: Yes, I think there’s a trade-off there, and I think one of the things, if you think about it from a deliver-
from-store perspective, there is a cost associated with that. I think one of the things that Home Depot has been
really good at is the ability to ship to store, and so that defers the cost for the customer. The customer can go
ahead and rent their own truck to pick it up at the store, rather than incurring the delivery costs from the
distribution centre to their house, and so that allows savings on both the customer side as well as Home
Depot’s side in that type of methodology. That’s one of the things I think that helped most during COVID, is
these frameworks were already being developed and being thought about, your kerbside pickup, your deliver-
from-store or your buy-online, ship-to-store options. That infrastructure had already been developed in
advance of COVID, and COVID helped shift the usage of those delivery models during the heightened COVID
impacts, so you saw a bigger increase of the kerbside pickup, but you also saw a bigger increase of deliver-
from-store, as well as ship-to-store.
[00:24:27]
Q: How is Home Depot thinking about pricing in this high-demand environment? What promotional activity
have you noticed? Have some of the categories fallen out of favour, leading to more promotions, or have prices
stayed relatively steady on a gradual pace up?
CC: From what I’ve seen is that Home Depot, essentially, they’re still running the same amount of
promotions, but they’ve been doing two things. One is that they’re making the suppliers pay for any increase in
raw materials and shipping, and they’re trying to not pass that onto the consumers, so, relatively, prices have
stayed the same, but it’s been the suppliers who have incurred more expensive supply chain and raw materials
costs. The other thing is I know that during the height of COVID, there was a pull-back on promotional activity
because there was the concern of driving too many customers to the stores, but, since then, I think that’s been
a more return to normal, in which they’re still trying to promote and capture demand at certain key points in
the year, like your Memorial Day, 4 July, Labor Day, Black Friday, Cyber Monday or Spring Black Friday type
moments.
[00:26:19]
Q: What have you noticed around Home Depot’s consumer profile? Where do you think the company does
well around consumer loyalty?
CC: I honestly think that it’s a personal preference, and it may be based on location or proximity. They say if a
person does a weekend project, they’re in Home Depot two or three times that weekend, so if the Home Depot
is closer to the customer than the Lowe’s is, the customer is more likely to go to the Home Depot rather than
the Lowe’s because the assortments are so similar and the pricing is so similar. Only if the Lowe’s offered a
better price, potentially, would the customer go further or change their convenience strategy. The other thing
is if a customer is just more inclined to shop at one or the other out of personal preference, then that might be
a reason as well. The other thing I’m thinking about is from a military standpoint, Lowe’s gives a discount to
military veterans and I don’t believe Home Depot does, so that’s going to play a little bit into the loyalty part,
and then Home Depot offers rental services and I don’t believe that Lowe’s necessarily offers rental services,
or, if they do, it’s on a much smaller scale.
NH: What are your thoughts on this in comparison to regional players and smaller avenues for other
localisation?
Private and confidential 7
CC: I think from a pricing standpoint, Home Depot definitely runs bigger sales on a wider product of
categories. Say, someone like Ace doesn’t necessarily run a kitchen and bath sale biannually like Home Depot
does, but Ace’s strongest value proposition could be in a place like hardware. I want to say, I think I have these
numbers wrong, but let’s say there are 10,000 nuts and bolts SKUs at The Home Depot, Ace would have three
or four times that amount of assortment because they want to be known for the person who’s doing hardware
or woodworking, to be able to have that in stock for them to come down to your neighbourhood Ace store,
whereas Home Depot mainly just wants to play in the top-selling, say, 10,000 hardware SKUs.
[00:29:36]
Q: How big of a holiday season do you think Black Friday will be, given that it seems many companies are
pulling promotions forward, given the supply chain issues?
CC: I don’t know if I’m qualified to say. I’m not close enough to the industry and a little bit removed from
Black Friday, what the strategy is.
NH: What about historically in terms of overall demand during these time periods or just promotional activity
as a whole?
CC: Just in general, when you’ve looked at Black Friday, is that the Black Friday time period historically, over
the last 5-10 years, has gotten bigger and moved forward, and that captures more demand, but what I would
expect is that you’ll still see bigger Black Friday numbers than last year. You just may not see this type of
growth from 2020. You will see smaller growth from 2020 to ’21 than you did from 2019 to 2020, if that
makes sense, but you’ll still see positive growth over last year.
NH: How does that play out on the physical front, given the ongoing pandemic and many customers wanting
deals? Is this like an omnichannel, where Home Depot releases a lot of deals via the online click-and-collect
channel?
CC: Each year, Home Depot has expanded its online-only assortment and, in doing that, they’ve also
expanded their online-only deals as well, so that although the customer can find the same deals in store and
online, there are both exclusive deals to being online as well as there will be exclusive deals to being in store.
[00:31:55]
Q: You outlined the efficiency throughout Home Depot’s supply chain. At what point are the company’s hands
tied because of the supplier’s inability to meet that demand?
CC: If you ask the executives of supply chain, never, and the reality is that the way they’re thinking about it is
there’s always a better way for Home Depot to get further and deeper into the supply chain, so it’s like that.
That may mean a Home Depot employee goes to a supplier’s factory and measures every single box in that
supplier’s distribution centre to make sure that when they cube out the truck or fill out the truck, they have
accurate measurements for loading that truck with as much merchandise as possible. Yes, that’s on Home
Depot’s dime, but the vendors invite that because it means more merchandise flowing from that supplier to
Home Depot. I think from a supply chain side, and even going to the fact of when a PO is created from the
Home Depot side and drops down into the supplier’s order management software, Home Depot will send a
supply chain consultant to that company to watch how that purchase order gets transferred through their
organisation, to see if there are any efficiencies. Again, it’s all about Home Depot thinking, “If we can improve
the supplier, we can get them to ship to us faster and/or lower the cost there.”
Private and confidential 8
[00:33:59]
Q: How do you think that supplier-retailer relationship has evolved or transformed, when you have Amazon
trying to post the same products as Home Depot and Lowe’s?
CC: I think there’s always competition and the idea of wanting there to be exclusivity, or even a supplier to,
say, reserve their inventory for Home Depot or protect inventory for Home Depot first. The reality is that’s not
necessarily the case. It ends up going to whichever channel is turning the fastest. What you want to make sure
is that in the case of Home Depot, and this is how Home Depot’s supply chain thinks about it, is that the goods
are flowing as fast as possible from the vendor to Home Depot and onto the shelves, so that the customer can
purchase it and create that supply chain flywheel. The second part is that it’s expensive to sell as a seller or a
vendor on Amazon. Therefore, if Home Depot can figure out a way to reduce costs within the supply chain that
can be shared between the vendor and Home Depot, then that benefits the vendor and encourages the vendor
to sell more merchandise through Home Depot than it does on Amazon.
[00:35:40]
Q: You mentioned Home Depot may have a better assortment than Lowe’s with one particular vendor. Could
you give us its strengths in categories across paint, flooring, bath and kitchen?
CC: I know for sure in flooring, Home Depot has a much stronger assortment in the trending flooring
categories, which are laminate plank, luxury vinyl tile and luxury vinyl plank, than Lowe’s. Home Depot also
has a stronger assortment or a wider assortment for paint as well, and then I would say I wouldn’t know about,
or I couldn’t remember off the top of my head, how their kitchen sinks and faucet assortment looked.
NH: Did you notice any DIY vs pro user or consumer trends across customers within those specific groups?
CC: Yes, for sure. Paint during COVID became a huge DIY opportunity. In flooring, you saw the flooring
trends move towards laminate, vinyl tile and luxury vinyl plank, and there are two reasons there. One is the
product is more innovative than wood, but also it’s easier to install and someone can, theoretically, install it
themselves, whereas it takes a professional to install a wood floor. Lastly, free-standing vanities as well,
definitely a move towards people who are, say, remodelling their half-bath or even have smaller vanities in
their bathrooms, about being able to buy it and then install it themselves.
[00:38:04]
Q: How might Home Depot consider pricing across DIY vs pro users? Who is more price-sensitive?
CC: Th pro is for sure more price-sensitive, and the reason being for that is they’re having to make a margin
on the product that they’re purchasing, and, also, the pros who are working at Home Depot tend to be
majoritively, I would say, repair-driven. Say a pro comes down to repair a faucet for a landlord, they’re going
to be looking at the cheapest faucet, or if they’re going to be repairing a toilet, they’re looking at an entry-level
price-point toilet for doing that.
[00:39:04]
Q: How does Home Depot communicate between DIY and pro customers? They all have different factors that
will keep them loyal to the brand.
CC: This is one of the initiatives that I worked on, and it all hinges around communication. A pro is going to
be more likely to shop online to check inventory levels in the store, and then they’re going to end up making
Private and confidential 9
the purchase in the store. The most important thing for a pro to be able to see on the website is is this
available, where it’s available, and the second one is what’s the price. In store, you’re going to have a heavier
weighting towards entry-level price points for that pro to be able to go and pick it up and take it right to the job
site, or replace that faucet or leaking toilet. Whereas a customer, you want to have higher-price-point items in
the store and allow them to go and see, say, a USD 200 or USD 300 vanity example in the store, to be able to
test out the quality, how the drawers pull out, how the doors open up, how it opens up in the back, what it
looks like, the quality, etc, but then what you’ll have with the DIY customer is that expanded assortment online
for them to pick. “I like this vanity, but, instead of the 48-inch vanity, I want the 56-inch or the 60-inch vanity,
and, instead of the drawers being on the right, I want it on the left. Instead of light beige, I want the dark green
one.” Whereas in store, you may only have two colours, or one colour, at most. How they communicate to that
customer in the store is by showing that expanded assortment and saying, “Here’s our assortment in store,
but, if you go online, instead of looking at 10, you can look at 10,000 vanities.”
[00:41:29]
Q: How does marketing change for pro customers between basic and bigger-ticket items? What are the trends
across smaller items that you could order off of Amazon vs spending over USD 1,000 at Home Depot per item?
CC: I think it has less to do with the actual ticket and more to do with the job and the timing. A lot of times, if
a pro is going to need something, they’re going to need something now for a repair. Think of if you call a
plumber or repairman, it’s for a leaking faucet or a toilet that you want repaired now, so, potentially, you can’t
wait a day or two days for Amazon to deliver that toilet or faucet, so you’re going to wait on that, and then,
from a job perspective, the pro may spend more. If they’re at an apartment building, they may be going
through and replacing a bunch of faucets, or they may be going through and buying a bunch of materials for a
job for that day, so it’s less, necessarily, about the single item and more just about the pro basket is bigger than
a DIY customer’s basket, but a DIY customer’s single-ticket item might be bigger than a pro’s single-item
purchase.
NH: Where is the opportunity for Home Depot between those two segments? What was management
primarily focused on when you were at the company?
CC: That’s a really good question. In my opinion, I think that management is focused on two things. I think
they’re focused on the pro consumer and a very small part of the pro consumer that represents a large part of
the spend at Home Depot, and then, from a DIY perspective, they’re thinking about how do they compete with
Amazon and Wayfair and Overstock in terms of a convenience and experience model. They very much want
Home Depot to be a place that people come to shop and think about shopping for the experience and
convenience, both online and in store, whereas the pro, they’re focused on what is the assortment and how is
the convenience to access that assortment. I would say it’s a dual strategy, and probably not one is more
focused on the other, but they each have different points that the management is focused on.
[00:44:55]
Q: What do you think about the prospects for margin increase? Is it about pro customers with the bigger
tickets, but who will go for the lowest-priced item?
CC: There are going to be lower margins associated with them, plus, if you’re a pro, then most likely you’re
getting a contractor’s discount on that, anyway.
NH: Could you elaborate on that? Are there added incentives from Home Depot’s side to really take in that
pro customer and retain them?
CC: Yes, I believe it’s called a contractor’s desk, and you can go in if you’re buying bulk supplies. You can get a
special discount and special pricing by signing up. It’s through the business-to-business programme, as
Private and confidential 10
opposed to consumers buying one item of something will definitely pay a higher price.
[00:46:10]
Q: You mentioned pro customers typically check inventory online, which would determine if they’ll come in or
not. What are your thoughts on repeat purchases from the pro consumer? Alternatively, despite having a
contractor’s discount, is it a one-time purchase here, a one-time purchase elsewhere and then they’ll come
back?
CC: It can be both, but, more recently, Home Depot has gotten smarter about having job-site delivery. Say a
person who is a professional patio builder is constantly having concrete delivered to the job site, then they can
start setting up recurrent orders either to their yard or orders directly to the job site, for delivery.
[00:47:12]
Q: How do you think Home Depot fares with the labour issue around store associates? Many companies from
every sector are having a hard time keeping employees and hiring people. How has Home Depot built higher
employee loyalty?
CC: I think one of the things is just how the company is set up in general. Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank,
the way that they set it up was an inverted pyramid, in which the CEOs, which they were both CEOs, are at the
bottom, and the customer is at the top of that pyramid, and the whole idea is that the CEO takes care of his
executive team and the executive team takes care of the managers and the managers take care of the store
associates. The store associates then take care of the customers and the business takes care of itself, based on
that. I think if you just think about the idea, and this is a little bit theoretical but goes very much into the
nature of how Home Depot is set up, the headquarters of Home Depot is not called the Home Depot
headquarters in Atlanta. It’s called the Store Support Center. The whole reason it’s called the Store Support
Center is it’s not set up to be the headquarters, it’s set up to be the support for the stores and the support for
the store associates. All the way from when you work at the headquarters or the Store Support Center, the
issues that will come in as what they call priority one issue are the issues that come in from the stores. The
whole idea is can you resolve that issue in the same day and get back to the store before the end of the day, so
that sales aren’t lost and that customer or that store associate’s payroll isn’t wasted? I think that that goes a
long way to helping the store associates feel like they’re valued, and also that the work that they’re doing
matters, when you have a whole building full of people there to support the stores.
[00:49:53]
Q: Could you discuss SKU rationalisation in this high-demand environment, whether it’s building out what
you offer online vs in store? What can Home Depot expand into, given it seems the company is in almost every
category?
CC: I want to say about 10 years ago, when the online business first started to take off, they developed this
concept of the endless aisle. While store shelf space was limited and only highest-performing SKUs from a
rationale perspective, how much SKUs per sales, ended up in the stores, and rigorously looked at keeping
those SKU stores and SKUs as productive as possible, they went after online just putting everything that they
could, figuring out that more SKUs was better. This was something I learned at eBay early on in my e-
commerce days, was that eBay has millions and millions of listings, but having more listings doesn’t actually
equate to more sales if your customer can’t find the product that they’re looking for. That very much happened
at Home Depot, where they just had SKU after SKU after SKU of items and customers actually couldn’t find
the product that they were looking for because they weren’t organised and set up in a way that was digestible.
That was one thing that while I was working there, the merchandising team worked very closely on
Private and confidential 11
assortments and how do you scale back the assortments to make an assortment that’s meaningful online, as
well as how do you structure the categories online from a category perspective and attributes, creating
attributes for these products so that customers can find them easier and faster?
[00:52:35]
Q: What are your demand expectations over the next 1-2 years? It seems new home builds are continually
growing, but it seems Lowe’s or Home Depot are focused on R&R [repair and remodel].
CC: I think demand is going to continue to be high, even in the face of inflation. The consumer is going to
continue to pay more and demand more. I think the things like TikTok or Snapchat or Instagram or Pinterest
have created demand within the décor industry, and Home Depot and Lowe’s and Amazon and Overstock are
filling that demand, and that demand is only going to increase over the next two years. That being said, that
dovetails into the second part of your question. I think that décor categories and lifestyle categories are going
to be the growth area, so if you think about it, more home gyms were created in 2021 because of COVID than
ever before, more people repainted the interior of their homes than ever before, more people redid their half-
baths and bought rugs and new lighting fixtures. That was already a trend pre-COVID, and I think that COVID
just helped to spike that, and that trend is going to continue because of what you’ve seen on the TikToks and
Instagrams and Snapchats. If you think about it, it’s like Keeping Up With the Joneses on steroids, very much
driven by the millennials generation. Before, when you were keeping up with the Joneses, maybe it was about
buying an appliance, a TV or a car, and now it’s just expanded into about 1,000 more décor-type items that
you can purchase for your home or for your lifestyle.
[00:55:34]
Q: How does the home garden segment into demand for Home Depot or other home improvement stores,
given home ownership isn’t as high as it used to be?
CC: I don’t think it matters. I think that what you saw is even people who are renting still wanted to make
décor improvements to where they were living, whether it’s new furniture, new rugs, new draperies or even
patio furniture. Even before COVID hit, patio furniture was one of the fastest-growing categories at Home
Depot, and that’s ubiquitous, whether you’re a renter or a homeowner.
[00:56:30]
NH: With that said, I think we will go ahead and end the Interview. Let me close by saying thank you, Chris.
We were able to cover an extensive amount, and thank you, clients, for joining Third Bridge Forum’s
Interview. If any clients would like to arrange a private meeting or consultation, please contact your
relationship managers. Have a good one.
CC: Okay. Thank you very much. Appreciate it. Bye bye.
Transcription ends at 00:56:46 of the recorded material
Private and confidential 12