Home Depot's first two stores moved into old discount hypermarkets near Atlanta
Home Depot opened its first two shops on June 22, 1979, in metro Atlanta, inside spaces leased from J. C. Penney that had been Treasure Island hypermarkets. The founders' bet was simple: build home-improvement stores bigger than anyone else's. Ten years later it had overtaken Lowe's as America's largest home-improvement retailer.
Five people founded the company in 1978: Ken Langone, the investment banker who helped raise the money, together with Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah and Ron Brill. It went public on the NASDAQ in September 1981, raising just over four million dollars, and that year pushed beyond Georgia into Florida. By 1984 it ran 19 stores selling more than 256 million dollars a year, and it bought its way into Dallas.
Growth hurt. In the mid-1980s earnings fell 42 per cent and debt climbed to 200 million dollars, so only 10 new stores opened in 1986 while a share sale helped restructure the finances. The recovery was fast: by 1995 sales had reached 10 billion dollars across 350 stores, and the company had moved into Canada by buying the Aikenhead's Hardware chain.
Leadership brought controversy. Robert Nardelli, a former General Electric executive, became chief executive in 2000 and left in January 2007 amid complaints about heavy-handed management and pay of 123.7 million dollars over five years while the share price lagged Lowe's. His 210 million dollar severance was criticised because his rewards rose as the stock fell. The housing downturn of 2008 and 2009 then forced thousands of layoffs and 54 store closures, including the whole upmarket EXPO Design Center chain. A 2014 data breach was blamed partly on staff typing card numbers into desk computers rather than using payment terminals.
In fiscal 2024 the company, based in Cobb County, Georgia, reported 159.5 billion dollars in revenue with about 470,100 staff, and it agreed that year to buy SRS Distribution for 18.25 billion dollars.
Source: Home Depot
