Home Depot Closing Some Stores

[gburnet]

I came across this post on SlickDeals...http://forums.slickdeals.net/showthr...uid=0&t=810210

Found a story about it here...http://money.cnn.com/news/newsfeeds/...3_FORTUNE5.htm

[David Meiland]

I was listening to the radio yesterday.... NPR, that bastion of delusional far-left liberalism... and the man being interviewed was an economist talking about the plight of many, many retail companies. He said there are almost 20 stores open now for every 10 that the economy can really support. He read a long list of companies closing some or all stores, and it was staggering. Scary stuff. Apparently a lot of them require a lot of bank credit to operate, and it's no longer there.

[Al (Ca.)]

Lately, I have been approached by HD employees at different stores offering their help and on occasions I saw cashiers outside their cubicle looking out waiting for customers.
That unusual behavior on HD employees gave me a good sense that something wasn't right at HD.
Now comes the store closings.

Al

[davenorthup]

Ha - I have darkened the doors of the Orange hell and saw the exact same thing as Al mentions, "good morning" " how are doing"..

Some thing very strange is going on over there and I want no part of it.

I have a great local supplier who has 12 locations in the state vs a few HD's so they are still great; they were just bought by Pro Build so we'll see if there are changes.

They just had the yearly contractor show and I won a jacket, my employee won the grand prize some Ore Pac golf clubs, and a few days ago I get a call for my wife - yep she won a new Dewalt job box. I guess we cleaned up this year.

PS - I am selling lottery numbers to the highest bidder... :)

[Bob Kovacs]

The two stores that are closing in NJ don't surprise me. Not because those two particular stores are necessarily poor locations or anything, but because they've over-built the number of stores there in the past decade to the point of absurdity. Back in 1993 or so they opened the first HD that was near my house, and it was around a 7 mile drive. A few years later they opened another that was around a 3 mile drive (and on the same route as the first one). By the time we moved out last year, there were 4 stores within less than 4 miles of my house, and each time they'd open a new one, the others would get much less crowded- they were literally competing with themselves at that point.

[Al (Ca.)]

The big question is what will be the final destiny of those humongous empty buildings custom built to meet HD needs?
Here in the city of Orange, Ca a large appliance store, Addray's, went under about 5 or 6 years ago, I believe and its building was new and beautiful but remains unoccupied with a "for lease" sign since the days Addray's closed its doors.
For many cities that need new housing, like the one I live in, but have no room to expand a HD closing could be a blessing since its large piece of land could be used by a developer to build new housing, namely very expensive 4 or 5 story high, cheaply stick built, building apartments with underground parking, known nowadays as condominiums.
Al

[Bob Kovacs]

Several large Walmarts, etc., have been converted into schools- it's a perfect re-use. The buildings are the right size for a decent high school, they've got tall ceilings for gyms/auditoriums, and plenty of acreage for tracks, football fields, etc (just gotta tear out some asphalt). The few I've seen featured in magazines look great when they're done.

[Otis P. Driftwood]

HD has saturated the market in eastern / central Massachusetts IMHO. Rumour has it they are closing a store in Shrewsbury,MA in order to build a new store a few miles East in Westboro, so they can be 1less than1 mile away from a Lowes store. On the other side of the equation, Wal-Mart keeps putting up super centers on every street corner here. I too have seen the new "hello, can I help you" attitude at HD stores, but then again it's Spring, and probably new hires...

[m beezo]

I think over building is part of it. I also think they may have become like the WalMart of the building industry. They come to an area and promise to bring in all the traffic and money to a city's coffers. They get a big piece of land and put up a building. A few years later the next city down the road asks for some of that tax revenue and they build one. Now you have half as much money going into each one.

You have to admit that just the cost of opening the store up each day is pretty large. How many boxes of nails and studs you have to sell just to make that cost alone? Then you still have to pay workers, taxes, insurance, and anything else that can come along with it.

And once the store is gone what are you going to do with the thing? We had a KMart that went out of business. But they had a 20 year lease on the property. They kept the building vacant, paid for the lease for the next 5 or so years just so some competition could not come in and use the building. The did minimum maintance on it so at the end of their lease the building had to come down because it was by then unusable.

[Bob Kovacs]

You have to admit that just the cost of opening the store up each day is pretty large. How many boxes of nails and studs you have to sell just to make that cost alone? Then you still have to pay workers, taxes, insurance, and anything else that can come along with it.

Well, HD's economic model for a new store is that each store's sales goal is a minimum of $1 million in gross sales/week. Given the recent reports that showed even in this "down market" that HD is turning a 10% net profit, they're raking in $190k/week for every store that's making it's sales goals. So, even with the costs of labor, rent, heat/AC, and product, they're still doing OK.

[VTNorm]

I doubt my local HD pulls in $1M/week just given the small size of our market. They cut back the hours to 8a-8p during the winter, just started opening at 7a recently. But any night after 6p and you could bowl in the aisles and not hit anybody.

The cashiers are always griping; they're 'part time' yet they routinely work 40+ hours a week. Some of them clock over 50 hours weekly. No bennies of course.

Lowes is opening a much bigger store a few miles away over the MA border.

-Norm

[A.P.G.C.]

The HD near me was PACKED every morning the past 8 months or so. The past few months you can park in the front row any morning of the week.

The Lowe's about a mile away is absolutely dead M-F and mobbed on Saturday.

[Overbuilders]

The big question is what will be the final destiny of those humongous empty buildings custom built to meet HD needs? Al

Two words - homeless shelters. The orange racks make perfect five story bunk beds. Every HD has comfortable indoor/outdoor restrooms, are in close proximity to both convenience and liquor stores, and have easy access to major intersections for quick-commute panhandling. Fabulous.

[Andrew R.]

Lately, I have been approached by HD employees at different stores offering their help and on occasions I saw cashiers outside their cubicle looking out waiting for customers.
That unusual behavior on HD employees gave me a good sense that something wasn't right at HD.
Now comes the store closings.

Al

I almost fell over when a HD emplyee asked if they could help me the other day, sounds like the employees have been told to actually work. I still doubt 9 out of 10 HD employees know what a soffit vent is or where it is.

[calvert]

For as much complaining as you guys are doing about HD, I would like to hear about your experiences with Lowes. I hate HD but have typically found them to be staffed to a higher level of competence than Lowes. Nothing is worse than Lowes.