As everyone who is involved in the building and design industry, more and more trends are being evolved when it comes to home decorating. Women who are staying at home moms or work from home moms are very in tune with the world of interior design. Many women, and men for that matter, are pursuing careers in designing themselves. Most stores you go to that are tailored around building, construction, and design are set up to catch the attention of trade workers, and contractors, like Home Depot for example. When you go into a Home Depot, the majority of them are built with the idea that most men who work in the trades come in during a job for extra materials or to start a new one. Well, now Home Depot is changing up the game.
How Home Depot is Changing the Game
Home Depot is tailoring its stores to also fit the needs of the design industry and women shoppers. By pushing products like textiles and furniture, they are catching the eyes of women inside and outside the design industry.
Of course, Home Depot will continue to work with the pro-market of contractors, home builders, and tradespeople. Their main goal right now is configuring their store to fit the needs of those who are in the business of home improvement, while other shoppers will be shopping to design and redecorate homes. At the end of the day, these trades often cross over causing a professional in the design and architecture industry to need material to demo a house during a major remodel or vice versa. With that being said, each store must be able to fit the needs of everyone while not inconveniencing tradespeople in any way.
EVP Ted Decker’s SVP of merchandising, Jeanine Huebner, stated in regards to this change, that Home Depot should focus on their women clientele more, rather than their pro contractor customers:
“From all of our history, when you look at the categories we play in – in décor, paints, rugs, and all categories – the ‘she’ customer is making most of the decisions, even if they are utilizing a pro to help them with that renovation. If they are utilizing the pro, whether it’s to install or paint, we have really had our focus on her, to help convert her with the sale.”
Home Depot also has a program called Pro Referral that allows someone to purchase an item and be contacted in regards to installation if needed. This is a system that can be tailored to everyone who typically shops at Home Depot, especially if a designer or a woman shopper needs help with a specific job or installation.
Basically, the overall focus of Home Depot isn’t the number of home improvement professionals that come in to shop with Home Depot, but more about the women who shop and need a home professional to assist in a job. This allows Home Depot to not only gain more in the line of sales but become more well known for their referral program and helping the newly found souls in the industry. They want to make them feel welcome and understand their products more when they are shopping in their store.
We can all imagine as a woman how intimidating it is to walk into a Home Depot with a professional or your significant other to point you in the right direction. Typically when a contractor walks into Home Depot, they know exactly where to find everything and rarely has to ask for help. For women who have never really shopped at Home Depot, it can be stressful. Often times there are a few workers who aren’t keen on women and aren’t willing to be very helpful, which adds to the stress.
Here at Rocky Mountain Forest Products, we make it a point to never discriminate against women and help them as much as we possibly can. Doing anything that has to do with building materials as women can be stressful so we make sure to treat everyone equally and give them all the information upfront. Our number one goal as a company is transparency, we always give all the information that we have and we never lie about our products, the quality of our products and the pricing. As a woman shopping for building materials often times you will be lied to about pricing or taken advantage of because it is assumed you don’t know about pricing. We make sure to guide women through the buying process and make sure they are treated equally compared to men in the industry.
If Home Depot tailors their stores to center around design and decorating while also doing their traditional business, imagine how much more efficient their store will be. They will definitely be less intimidating for anyone who is not in the construction trades to shop in their store. Do you think this will benefit Home Depot stores and their customer clientele; or do you think this will slip through the cracks and not evolve into anything? It will be interesting to see what comes of the “magical” world of Home Depot.
