Inside Home Depot by Chris Roush

Author:Chris Roush [Roush, Chris]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: McGraw-Hill Education
Published: 1999-02-22T05:00:00+00:00

In 1946, brothers Al, Mort, and Robert Rickel started a heating contracting business called “Rickel Bros.” in Newark—ironically, where Marcus was born and raised. Shortly after the Rickels opened for business, young Bernie Marcus graduated from a local high school. Seven years later, the brothers opened a store on Route 22 in nearby Union. The company grew, and in 1969 it changed its name from Rickel Supermarts to Rickel Home Centers. That same year, the company merged with the Pathmark supermarket chain. Like Handy Dan on the West Coast and dozens of other regional home center retailers, Rickel—on the East Coast—developed the do-it-yourself business in the 1970s. By 1975, it had more than $80 million in sales and a niche as the dominant home improvement retailer in the Delaware Valley. And for most of the first decade of Home Depot’s existence and expansion, Rickel was insulated from the growing competitor. Home Depot stayed south of the Mason-Dixon Line.

That changed in 1989. Home Depot opened a 100,000-square-foot store in East Hanover, New Jersey. A year later, Marcus and Blank added 3 more locations in the state—one each in Lakewood, Paramus, and Parlin. Employees at the new New Jersey stores wrote a song used to serenade Marcus and Blank. Part of it was, “When we come to town they say, all the others run away. Channel they ain’t got no class; Rickel’s we’ll just kick their ass.” Within three years, Home Depot had 12 stores in the state, including 10 in the northern half where Rickel once dominated.

Rickel was feeling the heat—and losing customers. In 1994, in a bid to cut its costs, Rickel was sold to a New York investment group and merged with another home center retailer, Channel Home Centers. Rickel also looked at other ways of reversing its fortunes. Those moves would lead it into Home Depot’s buzzsaw. In 1993, Home Depot applied to local government agencies to build stores in two more New Jersey towns—Pequannock and Bloomfield. As in North Carolina, the new stores received angry criticism from a citizens’ group, which called itself “Concerned Citizens for Community Preservation.” Marcus and Blank once again moved Home Depot into an adversarial situation.

In Pequannock, Home Depot proposed building its store near the intersection of State Road 23 and Jackson Avenue—near a local park visited by children. The group posted fliers and signs discussing Home Depot’s alleged “legacy”—basically, a Home Depot store brought in crime and traffic to an area. “Our kids will be crossing through this deathtrap!” said one of the fliers. A local attorney involved in the group, Frederic Azrak, lined up experts to testify at planning board meetings. At one, Azrak stood up on a chair and rolled out a printout of crimes at a nearby Home Depot. The protest defeated the application.

Undaunted but wary, Home Depot moved to Bloomfield where the retailer was seen as a key in the town’s efforts to redevelop a location once owned by the Schering-Plough Corp., a huge pharmaceutical company, near the Garden State Parkway.

Download

Copyright Disclaimer:
This site does not store any files on its server. We only index and link to content provided by other sites. Please contact the content providers to delete copyright contents if any and email us, we'll remove relevant links or contents immediately.