Throwback Thursday: At the start of HD's road

Before the days of $101 billion sales goals, Home Depot was just a new store in the neighborhood.

The special commemorative December 27, 1999 issue of National Home Center News (the predecessor to HBSDealer) took a look further back to 1979, when the first Home Depot store opened in Atlanta.

At the time of its debut in Atlanta, Home Depot was just on the verge of becoming the national chain we recognize today. Two new 60,000-sq.-ft. stores had opened in the area, and they billed themselves as "a dramatically new and different type of Home Improvement Center or Do-It-Yourself operation."

Home Depot's early days were also marked by "controlled chaos," or "disorder by design," where a warehouse-like merchandising strategy brought stockpiled products into the retail limelight.

# # #

What's the idea behind the Throwback Thursday feature? Click here for the article.