Sunday's Today Show gives Home Depot a big freebie.

[Ilsa]

They spent five or six miutes talking about how HD has remarketed itself in certain areas to be more female friendly with less of a warehouse appearance, changing the bright orange to a more earthy tone, almost no lumber products, more furniture items, and more impulse-purchase goods. Is GE and HD connected business-wise, or just politically?

[jmowreader]

1. This is one store, in California...

and they damn well BETTER come up with a new name for it.

A little background: Home Depot owns a subsidiary called EXPO Design Center. It is nothing like a Home Depot, and if these places didn't have "A Home Depot Company" written under the logo, you'd never suspect a thing. They sell ultra high end fitments for your home, such as Miele, Sub-Zero, Wolf, and Dacor. You know, shit almost no one buys because almost no one wants to, or can, drop $4000 on a range. Compared to a regular orange box, they are missing these departments: lumber, building materials, paint, plumbing, garden and millwork. They have very small electrical departments--all high-end lighting. They have a kitchen and bath department, a flooring department, a lighting department and an appliance department, and that's about it. And I believe they have some sort of a furniture department. (A regular Home Depot store doesn't have one. The outdoor furniture we sell is under Garden, and sometimes we get barstools or chairs which belong to Kitchen and Bath...but that's about it.)

We opened forty EXPO Design Centers, and six have been converted to Home Depots.

This new initiative is an attempt to bring the EXPO concept to the masses. Instead of having $4000 refrigerators, they have $1500-$1800 ones. Instead of having hand-made, hammered-copper, artisan-crafted $25,000 bathroom sinks, they have really nice $500 Decolav crystal bowl sinks. You get the idea...nice and kinda pricey, but not so outrageous no one can afford to shop there.

We've all pointed this out, though: it can't be called a Home Depot. What do you think when you hear Home Depot...well, besides "full of Chinese goods" and "non-union"? Of course! Rough construction supplies! Go to HD at 9:30 at night because your water heater just died, and not only will we sell you one, we'll either tell you how to install it or set up an installation for you. This new store doesn't have stick one of PVC pipe, it doesn't have board one of pressure-treated lumber.