Home Depot High on New Urban Format

By Staff -- Home Textiles Today, 11/29/2004 12:00:00 AM

Atlanta —

Home Depot's new urban store format will foster entry into countless city centers, while also yielding fresh best practices that could find their way into traditional suburban locations, said executives during the company's third quarter conference call.

Urban locales — on 23rd Street in New York City and Vancouver, Canada — are up and running, while a 59th Street New York City location is in the works.

Bob Nardelli, chairman, president and CEO of The Home Depot, said, “I am very pleased with our 23rd Street location in Manhattan, and last week I toured our 59th Street store. We also had a great opening in Vancouver with a tremendous response from customers on the new format. This gives us a new format to open new stores in new geographies.”

He added that the goal of this strategy was accessing “underserved customers in underserved markets. We're now looking at other opportunities to take that model across the country.”

In addition to focusing on city centers in the United States, Canada and Mexico, Nardelli said the company is working on entering China.

“We have moved our senior team to China. They are in Shanghai as we speak, and we will follow a similar model that worked in Canada and Mexico which includes both organic and inorganic means of growth,” he said. “I am not in a position to talk much more about it, but the performance of those other models gave us the confidence to move into China.”

As for the other models, Nardelli said the company now has 10 locations in Mexico City, with 42 overall in the country. Home Depot also has 110 stores in Canada and plans to open 25 more by the end of next year.