Home Center Merchant

Bill Fishman

Bill Fishman & Affiliates

'11650 lberia Place

San Diego, Ca.92128

IRECENTLY sat at the National Home I Center show advisory board meeting with Bernie Marcus, founder and ceo of the Home Depot chain. We were discussing the possibility of the show offering a bus tour of home centers in Atlanta (site of the 1985 National Home Center Show). Bernie pleaded "Not the weekend! Please do not bring a busload of distributors and dealers to our stores on the weekend or our people will be very unfriendly."

I quipped back, "Bernie, I visited your stores in all your markets and your people don't know how to be unfriendlY."

Bernie smiled and said, "We'll train 'em,"

Of course we won't Plan anY weekend bus tours. but Bernie Marcus is right. It would take retraining to get his people to be unfriendly.

More than anything else, I think one element in Home Depot's formula that imitators have failed to copy is the attitude of the store's people. It was the same in every Home Depot I visited in Orlando, Tampa, New Orleans, and Phoenix. In each store the help was very visible, very knowledgeable, very friendly and most important, very enthusiastic.

I think it's the enthusiasm that impressed me the most. I've seen nothing like it anywhere else in the home center industry. Let's face it; knowledge can be taught. Friendliness can be mandated. But enthusiasm has to show through at the pre-employment interview and Home Depot has found a way to recognize it and nurture it. Maybe The Home Depot has to offer better-than-average salaries to attract enthusiastic people but it appears to have a fast payback.

Typically, at other retailers, when a salesperson asks a customer if they can help they almost telegraph a fear that the customer will say "Yes." Not so at Home Depot. The floor people aggressively, but, politely seek out customers to help.

They project an aura of confidence but not superiority. lt's refreshing.

I think it's this sincere enthusiasm that makes the Home Depot shoPPer feel good about buying and makes them want to come back again. Others may mimic the Home Depot's merchandise mix, store layout, advertising format, price gu:uantees, orange stenciled signs, and visual merchandising but, without the employee enthusiasm, it all adds up to a near miss!

Thol's How lt Goes!