Tag: The Home Depot

Accelerated Analytics’ Home Depot Customers Win in Q3

Posted on December 18, 2018 by Helen Thomas - Blog

Accelerated Analytics customers who sell into Home Depot once again outpaced results for year over year US comp sales. Home Depot reported a 5.4% increase in year over year US sales comps for the quarter, as part of 5.1% overall sales increase over Q3 2017. Accelerated Analytics customers grew an average of 5.9%, topping The Home Depot overall.

The Home Depot also reported top performing department trends included appliances, electrical, plumbing, tools, decor and flooring. Every one of these departments are represented in Accelerated Analytics’ customer base. Customers use our Power Pack of reporting tools to control out of stocks, deal with weather trends and prepare for line reviews. On top of tracking point of sale activity, they are some of the strongest partners with their retailers.

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The Home Depot Continues Quest for “Frictionless Shopping” for Customers

Posted on October 3, 2018 by Helen Thomas - Blog

Recognizing the need for a strong customer-first digital shopping experience, The Home Depot developed a digital strategy in 2015, and is still making this a primary focus for the DIY retailer. Nearly half of their online orders are picked up in store, whether the order came from do-it-yourself consumers or professional customers. “We’re very passionate about thinking customer-first and customer centricity,” said The Home Depot’s senior director of digital strategy and mobile applications, Matt Jones. The retailer wants to ensure that its customers have a blend of digital tools to engage with them while comparing and shopping for the goods that they need.

For the professional shopper, The Home Depot offers reserved parking, dedicated check out and loading of goods, volume discounts, and having the merchandise picked and ready for pick-up at the front of the store. The retailer is finding that the professional shopper has become more digitally savvy, many running their business entirely from an iPad of iPhone.

At the core of the digital strategy is The Home Depot app, which has features such as talk to text, images, account history, searching for product by scanning bar codes, shopping lists and augmented reality images. Added Jones, “We’re not trying to steer the customer in one direction or another. We’re trying to allow them to shop with us the way they choose to shop.”

The Home Depot Acquires The Company Store

Posted on January 10, 2018 by Helen Thomas - Blog

The Home Depot announced it closed its acquisition deal of The Company Store, finalizing on December 19. While the acquisition does not include The Company Store’s five retail brick and mortar locations, it did include “product development and sourcing capabilities to help us expand our online décor business into broader categories across the entire home,” said Chairman, CEO and President, Craig Menear. Founded in 1911, The Company Store has had great online sales success and industry leading capabilities in resourcing high quality products in bedding, bath and related categories.

Research analysts indicate that décor-oriented merchandise, such as flooring, lighting and window treatments, account for $25 billion of The Home Depot’s sales and décor alone is about $3 billion. This makes up about 28% of all Home Depot sales. However, expansion in this area will appeal to shoppers who tend to look to Bed, Bath & Beyond.

Sources: Chain Store Age, HomeDepot.com, USA Today

Our Power Packs Go Beyond What Comes in Free Portals

Posted on January 8, 2018 by Helen Thomas - Blog

With 15 years in the DIY sales and inventory reporting business, and over 50 years of retail experience, Accelerated Analytics offers “Power Packs” of reports expertly crafted for home and hardware brands. Our reports provide instant access to key performance indicators and measures that brands need to monitor results and drive business success at The Home Depot and Lowe’s. Brands are able to obtain some information directly from the retailers’ portals, so you may be asking what our consultative reports have that the free portals don’t. Easier to use, with greater flexibility and more robust data, our reports can be leveraged to improve sales comps and optimize inventory.

While brands can use the free retailer portals, the process of managing that data each week still presents challenges:

Extraction from each portal is manual, separate and difficult to merge into spreadsheets, and can take several days to get together, losing valuable time to take action on last week’s results
Retailer-specific SKUs need to be cross referenced to each other and to internal brand SKUs
Store information, product descriptions and attributes, comps and calendaring need manual manipulation or are not incorporated at all
Distribution to teams is manual, difficult and time consuming
Actionable insights are not readily called out, such as out of stocks or lost sales opportunities

Take a look at a side-by-side comparison of Home Depot Link, Lowe’s DART and Accelerated Analytics for more details on what our robust “Power Pack” of reports can provide!

The Home Depot’s Investments Have Paid Off

Posted on December 14, 2017 by Helen Thomas - Blog

At its investor day last week, The Home Depot commented on their successful investment strategies over the past decade, and the results in sales growth that they attribute to those efforts. The retailer has invested 5% every year to its ecommerce platform and improving current stores versus opening new ones. This has resulted in more than 6% sales growth for comp stores for 5 years. This past quarter they reported nearly 7% in increases. Accelerated Analytics customers are helping with driving those sales, posting an average of 9% growth in year over year comp stores.

In the investor call, The Home Depot announced it plans to double the investment spending in the next 3 years to $11.1 billion. Specific investments mentioned were faster check-out for customers, flexible scheduling and better wages for employees in the stores, and increasing inventory turn to be more efficient and keep stores fresh. The retailer is hoping for sales to reach $119.8 billion by 2021. CFO Carol Tome expects the expansion due to rising home value appreciation, and was not concerned by any possible tax plan changes that would change mortgage deductions. CEO Craig Menear reiterated that sentiment, saying fears are “overblown” and that tax reform will have an “immediate and significant benefit” for their tax rate.

Sources: Fortune.com, CNBC.com

Accelerated Analytics Customers Outperform Home Depot LY/TY Comps Again

Posted on November 17, 2017 by Helen Thomas - Blog

Accelerated Analytics customers who sell their products at The Home Depot saw their third quarter comp sales increase 9.2% over last year! That surpasses the results reported by The Home Depot in their recently released third quarter results. In a blog post on November 15th, we shared The Home Depot’s Q3 results which included reported sales of $25.0 billion, and comparable store sales for the third quarter of fiscal 2017 of positive 7.9 percent.

DIY, Home and Hardware vendors count on Accelerated Analytics to provide an expert reporting solution that empowers their sales, marketing and store operations teams. Our product and store level analytics provides the insights needed to exceed sales goals, increase orders to fully stock their shelves, test plan-o-gram efficiencies, and prepare for line reviews.

Our customers truly are winning at retail because we understand the home improvement retail business inside and out and provide a solution that is specifically targeted to, and designed for, a DIY vendor.

Home Depot 3rd Quarter Results

Posted on November 15, 2017 by Helen Thomas - Blog

The Home Depot announced its third quarter results yesterday, at $25.0 billion, up 8.1% from third quarter 2016. Comp store sales were up 7.9%, and comp sales for the US stores were up 7.7%. Hurricane-related selling is attributed to positively affecting sales by about $282 million. The Home Depot did incur hurricane expenses themselves of $104 million. The home improvement retailer lifted its 2017 sales growth estimates due to the two straight quarters of success. Second quarter results were the best in the company’s history. Their new estimate expects sales in 2017 will be up 6.3% and same store comp sales up 6.5%. The Home Depot operates 2,283 stores.

Kidde & The Home Depot to Distribute Smoke Alarms Across the Country

Posted on October 6, 2017 by Helen Thomas - Blog

Where there’s smoke, there’s smoke detectors. At least, that’s the goal.

Few people think about fires until they experience one themselves. But more people report fires than you probably think: approximately one in 338 households each year. That’s more than 360,000 homes.

What’s more: three out of five home fire deaths happen in homes without working smoke alarms.*

Accelerated Analytics customer Kidde and The Home Depot are helping to prevent that. Through Operation Save a Life, The Home Depot partners with Kidde and local fire departments to distribute thousands of smoke and carbon dioxide alarms in communities across the country each year. Since 2002, Operation Save a Life has provided more than 1.36 million smoke alarms in 15 communities.

“A working smoke alarm almost doubles your chance of escaping a fire without injury or death,” said Sharon Cooksey, marketing communications manager for Kidde. “Our mission is to save and protect. Installing a smoke alarm is the first step in doing that.”

Learn more about Kidde HERE and download our Kidde Case Study HERE.

Source: HomeDepot.com

How Home Depot Battles the Amazon Threat

Posted on September 13, 2017 by Helen Thomas - Blog

The Home Depot’s record breaking Q2 results this year didn’t prevent investors from being worried about the “Amazon Effect”; they took 3% off of the retailer’s value out of fear that the effect could spread to all area’s of retail.

Currently, The Home Depot hasn’t been as affected as other retailers, like fashion and department stores. This is attributed to consumers’ desire to see and touch big ticket items like appliances as well as to The Home Depot’s strong digital operations and their focus on professional shoppers like service contractors, property managers and multi-family apartment owners. Since many products in home improvement are not easy to deliver or profitable through online shipping, the retailer offers consumers the option to make their purchase online and pick up the items in the store. And, their mobile app provides a map of their stores so users can easily find the products they are looking for.

In a continued effort to remain “Amazon-proof, The Home Depot recently announced that they will be working with Google Home to offer voice ordering for home improvement products. And in an effort to cater to professional shoppers in the MRO market (maintenance, repair and operations), which make up 30-40% of Home Depot shoppers, the retailer launched a delivery program at the end of 2016 that offers delivery within a two-to four-hour window.

Source: Digiday.com

Home Depot and Lowe’s Back in Business in Florida after Irma Clears Out

Posted on September 12, 2017 by Helen Thomas - Blog

Home Depot and Lowe’s shares rose 4% over the past two weeks, as investors expect increases in sales before and after Irma. Both retailers donated money to the Red Cross prior to the storm, and now are opening stores to help rebuilding efforts, which will also help their quarterly sales. The retailers both pre-stocked stores before the hurricane for pre-storm supplies and to be ready quickly once the storm had passed. Their ability to provide these supplies quickly will help the rebuilding effort. Lowe’s is sending more than 500 truckloads into the state now. Both Lowe’s and Home Depot have price-freeze policies in place, as they do not raise prices during disasters. While some of their Florida stores may have sustained damage themselves that may be costly, typically storms increase the bottom line for home improvement retailers overall. Generators, plywood, water and gas cans are in big demand.

Sources: Wall Street Journal