MSNBC Breaking News... Home Depot Closing 15 Stores

[rsmith6621]

Due to slumping Home Improvment sales in the bush economy......no link yet...

[lisa58]

1. did they give any area or locations?

[jmowreader]

15. The Fifteen Home Depots That Are Closing

According to Triangle Business Daily:

Fort Wayne, IN (three other HD in the area)
Marion, IN (four other HD in the area)
Frankfort, KY (7 others in the area)
Opelousas, LA (three others)
Cottage Grove, MN (19 others)

East Brunswick, NJ and Saddle Brook, NJ (total of 20 in the area that contains these two stores)

Rome, NY (five others)
Bismarck, ND (only HD in North Dakota, so far as I can tell)

Findlay, OH and Lima, OH (total of 20 in the area)

Brattleboro, VT (19 others)

Beaver Dam, WI; Fond du Lac, WI; and Milwaukee, WI (total of 12 in the area)

Now you can understand the gravity of this situation: in many cases, they're overbuilt as fuck.

I'll give you an example from this area: Greensboro, NC. Store 3604 was the first one in that city, and it was built as a $125 million store. As you'd expect, a $125 million store is fucking huge. When it became a $165 million store the company built six others in Greensboro; now 3604 is probably a $45 million store.

[Ian David]

2. Awwww.... too bad for Rumsfeld Depot. He and Tom Ridge will be so sad.

I have a Home Depot walking distance from my house.

I drive 5 miles out of my way to go to the more progressive store, Lowes.

[lpbk2713]

4. Oh noes!!

Now where the hell will I buy my duct tape and plastic sheeting?

[Ilsa]

9. They keep only one aisle over from the cans of tuna and powdered milk

at your local grocery store.

[Ian David]

10. Lowes and Ace Hardware. n/t

[rsmith6621]

3. News Link

http://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/stories/2008/04/28/daily30.html

[graywarrior]

5. We have a Home Depot AND a Lowe's here in tiny little North Conway

Both stores are empty of customers but there was an article in the Conway Daily Scum about Home Depot losing to Lowe's because of where they are located.

[SammyWinstonJack]

6. And opening 55 stores including 36 in the US.

The closing stores represent less than 1% of the company's existing store portfolio but will affect 1300 employees.


The company will be just fine, those laid off employees, not so much.

[CTD]

7. Ironic considering Home Despot is a heavy Repub donor

We should all always shop Lowes (or, even better, a local independent shop) if possible.

[Ilsa]

8. Why bother improving your home when you can buy a

perfect Foreclosed McMansion?

This looks like a pretty bad economic sign to me. It's like it is the next step of budget cutting after people stop going to Starbucks.

[kestrel91316]

11. Of course. Now that they have run Tru Value Hardware and Ace Hardware

out of business, they close up shop and people will have to drive 100 miles to buy a few screws.

Figures.

[shain from kane]

13. Thank God, I don't have to go that far for a screw.

[kestrel91316]

12. Let's all do our part to help Home Despot close a few MORE stores.

Shop at the little guy.

True Value store finder:
http://www.truevalue.com/content/storefinder/default.aspx

Ace Hardware store locator:
http://www.acehardware.com/mystore/storeLocator.jsp

Lowe's store locator:
http://stores.lowes.com/lowes/cgi/index?design=default&lang=en&mapid=US&svv=true&fname=&snum=&sname=&ci=0&zip=&zipid=

[jmowreader]

14. In some of these cases, it's about damn time

Home Depot has a serious habit of cannibalizing its own stores. They seem to have a threshold: if you are in a single-store market and you hit $80 million in annual sales, they'll build another store in your town. This makes sense on paper, because the building, parking lot, staff, logistical trail...you need to sell $80 million worth of tangibles is far different from what you need to sell $40 million worth of it. In reality, if you build two $40 million stores in an $80 million town you wind up with one $55 million store and one $25 million store because who wants to shop in the "old" Home Depot?

I went to Triangle Business Daily's site and got a list of the stores being closed, and it's pretty telling. Of the fifteen, only the customers in Bismarck, North Dakota, will have no access to Home Depot. Go to East Brunswick, New Jersey, and it's a different story--there are 20 Home Depots in that area, two of which (Saddle Brook is the other) are closing. Three HD stores in the Milwaukee area are closing, and they have twelve. Two in Ohio are closing in an area that has twenty. And so it goes.

I feel very bad for the employees in all of this; they're being dumped out into the street in the worst economic climate in the last 40 years. Then again...thanks to several Bob Nardelli initiatives that haven't been overturned yet, most anyone who was hired by Home Depot in the last two years can make more money by asking if you want fries with that.

[newmajority]

16. Last time I went to Home Depot (around 2003) I saw the following sign

"We support the troops AND the President".

I haven't been back to the shithole since.

They have two stores in the local area, and I'd hate to see them go under, because those people would be out of jobs.

But I have no sympathy for the corporation at all.

[Supersedeas]

17. nothing to see here -- feed them more Paula Abdul