It's become the view of some observers of the DIY retailing world that Lowe's is the retailer that caters to women while Home Depot is the place guys go to shop.
While the view is overly broad and simplistic, there is no doubt that Home Depot is exploring opportunities to get in touch with its feminine side sufficiently enough to get women to spend more in its stores.
One such attempt will come later this month at two new Home Depot Design Center format stores opening in Concord, Calif., and Charlotte, N.C.
The stores, according to a report by The Atlanta Journal-Constitution, will be the same size of typical Home Depots but will differ in virtually every other respect.
"Nothing about this store feels like the Home Depot you know today. It feels much more like a studio environment," Jason Feldman, the company's senior director of merchandising, told the paper. "Imagine a Home Depot designed by a woman."
Joe Feldman, managing director of the Telsey Advisory Group, said the test was based on the business imperative of attracting female shoppers. "Women make 80 percent of the buying decisions on home improvement projects, so it only makes sense," he told the Journal-Constitution.
Among the changes in the new stores will be moving from Home Depot orange to earth tones. Ceilings will be lower and conference desks will be on the floor for customers to discuss design issues with employees.
With the new format, Home Depot seems resigned to the notion that it cannot serve its traditional contractor customers and female consumers under a single roof. The new units, for example, will not sell lumber and power tools but will have roughly 11,000-square-feet dedicated to furniture.
"The only reason a contractor would come into these stores is if a customer asked him to pick up tiles or counter tops or something like that for a project," Mr. Feldman told the Journal-Constitution. "Otherwise, if a contractor walks in and thinks this is a Home Depot, he's going to turn around and walk right back out. The beauty is, we've put these two stores a couple of miles away from the [regular stores], so we've still got something nearby that focuses on the core do-it-yourselfer and the pros."
Home Depot is not publicly looking beyond the test locations at this juncture. "It's two stores and two stores only right now in a couple of markets where we thought it would make sense," Mr. Feldman said. "Everything we're testing right now is really about finding out what works in a particular geography, and seeing if there are pieces that work that we can transfer somewhere else."
The Telsey Advisory Group's Feldman said, "They've been much more vigilant on the core retail business. Historically, Home Depot has always been willing to try things but a concern is that they hang on too long with their tests, instead of cutting bait and moving on, but maybe they're getting better."
Discussion Questions: Is the perception accurate that Home Depot does not address the needs of female shoppers in the majority of its stores? Is it possible for DIY stores to successfully sell to both contractors and female consumers under the same roof or do separate stores make better sense?