Welcome to Home Home Depot
HomeHomeDepot is a free resource for home and home depot information world wide. Home and Home Depot updates information related to various news and articles. Home Home Deopt also offers comprehensive web directory for home related category listings.
Home Depot Article
|
Hardware gets a softer look
True Value Co.'s makeover, aimed at attracting more women to its hardware stores, is to be unveiled Thursday at its fall dealer show in Atlanta. The new look touts wider aisles, color-coded navigational signs, softer lighting, earth tones and an expanded array of bath fixtures, door handles and other decorative hardware. Lyle Heidemann, chief executive of the Chicago-based cooperative, said the redesign should be more "female friendly," without alienating the traditional hardware customer. "We finally have a retail perspective of what a store should be," Heidemann said. "In the past, we had a wholesale assortment to pick from. Now, here's what we believe is a good retail assortment." The initiative marks the first major overhaul since Heidemann, a veteran of Sears' appliance and hardware business, took the helm of True Value in 2005. Rival hardware retailers, led by giants Lowe's Cos. and Home Depot Inc., have been responding to the influence women have in designing and remodeling their homes and that means True Value must follow suit, said Jim Robisch, senior partner at the Farnsworth Group, an Indianapolis-based retail consulting firm. "They understand as Lowe's changes yearly and Home Depot is trying new concepts, that they have to do the same," said Robish. "They're paying much more attention now to what customers are saying they want from stores." Earlier this year, True Value built a prototype store inside a warehouse in suburban Cary and showed it to about 60 of its store owners. After incorporating some suggestions, the final 12,000-square-foot model store was packed up and rebuilt in Atlanta for the show. The design is made to scale up or down to accommodate the wide array of sizes of the company's roughly 4,000 stores -- a crucial component to persuading the 3,600 independent store owners to buy into the concept. Test stores are in Houma, La.; Manhattan, Kan.; Groton, Conn.; and Walworth, Wis. True Value plans to incorporate elements of the redesign into more than 1,000 locations nationwide by 2010. http://www.chicagotribune.com/business/chi-thu_truevalu_1025oct25,0,6974613.story |
|