Founders Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank discuss the early beginnings of The Home Depot in the below excerpt from their book, Built from Scratch, written in 1998.
The creation of The Home Depot began with two words in the spring of 1978: “You’re fired!”
Twenty years ago, we were two out-of-work executives. Our situation was not a lot different than millions of others who were shown the door. We had little in the way of capital and faced some daunting personal and legal challenges as we tried to get our careers back on track.
In our early years, we lived on the edge, with no balance sheet and a lack of financing. It took great romancing to establish the vendor base necessary to open and maintain the broad product n for which we quickly became known. We were always pushing boundaries beyond where our industry’s conventional wisdom suggested we could go.
And it paid off. In just twenty years, our company, The Home Depot, has multiplied exponentially from our four stores in Atlanta to 775 stores, 160,000 associates and $30 billion in sales [Editor’s note: Above figures are quoted from 1998. The company has more than 2,200 stores and approximately 365,000 associates as of 2014 and $78.8 billion in sales in 2013]. Almost all of our growth has come from internal expansion and very little through acquisition. How did we and our associates do it?
Building
The Home Depot was a tough, uphill battle from the day we started in a Los Angeles coffee shop shortly after we were fired. No one believed we could do it, and very few people trusted our judgment. Or they trusted our judgment, but just didn’t think the whole concept of a home improvement warehouse with the lowest prices, best selection and best service was going to work. They certainly didn’t realize that what we were planning would turn out to be a revolution in the retail business…
…In 1981, before we went public, Bernie made speeches locally in the Atlanta area, where we were based. Standing before 400 members of a local Rotary Club, he asked, “How many people consider themselves real do-it-yourselfers?” He described a DIYer as someone who owned power saws, electric drills, etc., or who could change a light fixture. How many, he asked, could repair a toilet themselves rather than call a plumber? “A do-it-yourselfer is somebody who really can do those things,” he said. Out of 400 people, maybe 20 raised their hand.
Visit Built from Scratch’s THD Info, to view our interactive timeline and learn more about the history of The Home Depot.
