Home Depot talks strategies
Home Depot is investing in strategic initiatives as well as investing in its associates.
[Read about the Home Depot year end earnings.]
In a recent earnings call, Ann-Marie Campbell, senior EVP at the retail giant, talked about opportunities to create the best interconnected experience; growing their pro wallet share through an ecosystem of capabilities; and building new stores.
Along with those strategies she talked about their, “amazing associates and all that they do.”
Campbell said: “Recall at the beginning of the year, we announced a significant investment of approximately $1 billion in increased annualized compensation for our frontline, hourly associates.
“As a result of this investment, we saw what we intended to see, meaningful improvement in our attrition rates; particularly among our most tenured associates, which drove improved customer service, productivity and safety,” said the senior EVP.
Among the strategic opportunities she pointed out, she identified some of their goals this year.
As we continue to create the best interconnected experience and remove friction from our customer’s shopping journey, she said, “one of our biggest areas of opportunity is within our post-sale experience. For the majority of our customers, this process has largely been unchanged for the last 44 years and we have opportunities to improve this experience.”
In 2023, she said, the company made significant progress taking friction out of its online order management process. Today, she said, they’ve enhanced their systems to better allow their customers to both modify orders and self-service online returns.
“In 2024 we will focus on building more robust capabilities to support an interconnected self-service returns process, where customers will have the ability to start a return online and complete that return via mail or in- store,” said Campbell.
Store openings
Another goal for the retailer, she said, is to open approximately 80 new stores over the next five years.
“We have a premier real estate footprint that provides convenience for the customer that we believe is nearly impossible to replicate,” she said.
The company will continue to build out this footprint in a strategic way, she said, “by investing in new stores in areas that have experienced significant population growth or where it makes sense to relieve some pressure on existing high-volume stores.”
In fiscal 2023 the retailer opened 18 new stores, she reported: Eight in the U.S. and five in Mexico.
In the U.S., their eight new stores were roughly split between stores relieving pressure from higher volume existing stores and stores where they identified voids in new high growth areas.
As an example, she said, “we are already seeing great results from many of these stores and are particularly pleased with our Mapunapuna store in Honolulu, which allows us to better serve the Honolulu market.”
For fiscal 2024, the company plans to open approximately 12 new stores, she added.
Pro growth
Beyond the focus on removing friction and growing through new stores, the retailer has a lot of initiatives in 2024 geared at growing its share of wallet with the pro, she said.
When we invest in new assets and capabilities to better serve the complex pro, she said, this also improves our pro experience in our stores.
For example, said Campbell, “more jobsite delivery orders fulfilled from our distribution centers means less congestion in our stores and less time dedicated to picking, packing and staging orders for delivery. This gives our in-store pro sales associates more time to dedicate to our pros.”
Additionally, she said, “the ability to fulfill large orders through our distribution network also means that we have more product in-stock and available for sale for those pros shopping in our stores. These improvements benefit our associates and all of our pros.”
Campbell said they will be focused on better enabling alignment so they can more seamlessly deliver on their unique value proposition for all pros.
“I’m excited to see all of our initiatives gaining traction,” she said.
