Mega-retailer trying to think mini
Advertiser News Services
Home Depot, the sprawling home-improvement retailer of everything from duct tape to kitchen sinks, is thinking small.
Associated Press
As part of its growth strategy, the retail giant will open its first small-format store under the Home Depot name this week in the Mill Basin section of Brooklyn, N.Y.
Sales manager Rich Kantor showed a selection of faucet fixtures at the new Home Depot store in Brooklyn, N.Y. The store is about half the size of the typical Home Depot. It carries the same mix of products but in smaller quantities.
Another mini-store is planned for Staten Island in September and one in Chicago next year.
Home Depot, the nation's largest home improvement retailer, is among the "big box" retailers trying to further develop its business in once-overlooked areas of urban markets — despite logistical challenges such as finding adequate space.
The trend, which has gained momentum during the past 18 months, is being fed in part by the gentrification of urban areas and retailers' recognition of the spending power of residents.
To fit into these urban locales, Atlanta-based Home Depot has developed a reconfigured format that's half or less of the size of its giant suburban boxes.
"Any densely populated market is now open to us," says spokesman John Simley. "These are forgotten markets or have been ignored for no good reason."
Brooklyn is the most populated of New York's five boroughs.
The Brooklyn store has 61,000 square feet versus the traditional store's average 116,000 square feet, plus a 28,000-square-foot outdoor garden center.
The smaller Home Depots will have the same prices and product mix, just not as much of each item.
"The stores will contain the traditional 10 departments," Simley says — hardware, electrical, plumbing, paint, lawn and garden, storage and ready-to-assemble furniture, housewares and gifts, decorative bath, lighting and window, and wall fashions.
Home Depot has experimented with small-format stores before. Four years ago, it tested Villager hardware stores in four New Jersey neighborhoods.
But creating an entirely new brand proved too much and those stores, which were 45,000 to 55,000 square feet, will be converted to the Home Depot brand.
Retail experts say the small format is a good initiative for Home Depot, because many community hardware stores have shut down.
In most instances, the shops could not purchase goods as cheaply as larger stores and thus could not compete on retail price.
