TakeAway: To balance a decline in sales related to major renovations, Home Depot is pushing products related to redecorating.
Moreover, realizing that Home Depot stores can intimidate women (who just happen to be half of its customers), the chain is trying to simplify shopping through Martha Stewart Living products that carry icons to assist with coordination across categories.
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Excerpted from NYTimes, “Revamping, Home Depot Woos Women” , January 28, 2011
Without a housing recovery to revive sales of big items or major renovation supplies, Home Depot and its competitors are promoting smaller projects this spring, during what is the major selling season for home improvement stores. And that means sprucing up departments to get female customers excited about window treatments or new colors for makeovers of existing spaces.
Lowe’s, which says it has had a female focus since its beginnings, has added a line of décor products like mood lighting and chrome toilet-paper holders to appeal to women. True Value recently opened a corporate-owned store near Chicago that had wider aisles, better lighting and clear signs, part of an effort to attract women.
Home improvement stores “have been viewed as ‘very large hardware stores’ where big, burly men go to purchase their tools and supplies.”
“These big-box stores need to appear less hardware- and more improvement-driven in the image, and reflect more women in their messages.”
This is not the first time that Home Depot has tried to figure out what women want. It has been running Do-It-Herself workshops for female customers since 2003. In the early 1990s, it opened Expo Design Centers, showrooms with fresh flowers and other feminine touches. (It closed those centers in 2009.)
The Martha Stewart products are aimed at getting women who are already visiting the stores to buy more.
They are meant to spur spending across different categories, so a woman can buy paint, rugs and countertops that coordinate, increasing how much she spends for each visit.
Edit by AMW
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