Home Depot’s Tightening Its Tool Belt
In the New York Times article, Home Depot Girds for Continued Weakness, reporter Louis Uchitelle, gives the reader a new perspective on the financial collapse. Lehman Brothers collapsed, the markets went haywire, and no one is thinking about what Home Depot was going to do. I’ll admit until I read this, I rarely gave Home Depot’s survival a passing thought. I was drawn in with the tension of the lead. I could picture that big warehouse store and the cashier’s in their orange aprons emptying the registers.
The problem for most companies has been it’s failure to secure short term loans and here’s this gigantic company combatting this by not needing to borrow any money.
“In his view, the hard times and the less generous credit are restricting consumption and undermining the corporate expansion that drove economic growth in recent years,” wrote Uchitelle about Home Depot CEO Robert Blake.
I think the contrast of Home Depot’s strategy of scaling back and closing down unprofitable side businesses with Lowe’s strategy of continued expansion really enhances the piece.
“Home Depot’s closest competitor, Lowe’s, is taking the opposite tack, continuing to open outlets at a brisk clip in hopes of closing the gap with its much bigger rival.”
The story fell a little short at the end. I am not sure throwing in the anecdote all the way at the bottom about the people buying the foreclosed home works for this piece. I think that mentioning where the growth is and what the customer will look like works, but this anecdote gets me wanting a little more. It could have been a whole other story. It could have led the reader into a story about the money people are spending on fixing up foreclosed homes and how that’s keeping companies like Home Depot afloat. Not sure it really enhanced this piece so close to the end.
Tags: Home Depot, Louis Utichelle, Lowes, New York Times, Robert Blake