Will lockers transform Home Depot’s BOPIS operations?
Photo: The Home Depot
Home Depot plans to install pickup lockers near the front of all of its stores in an effort to improve its buy online, pick up in-store (BOPIS) operations and become bottleneck free.
When Home Depot's BOPIS customers arrive to pick up orders, they will be directed to the orange lockers, according to USA Today, where they will collect their product from the correct locker and leave without the need for associate assistance. While the chain has had such lockers in some locations since 2016, management is now aggressively rolling out the strategy with plans to have them in all stores by 2021.
By the end of last year, nearly 45 percent of Home Depot's online orders were picked up in-store, making BOPIS services an important area of focus for the chain.
The extent to which the lockers will streamline the pickup process, however, could depend on product size.
While Amazon lockers have proven good for facilitating the pickup of smaller items, Home Depot is often a destination for bulky items like lumber and appliances, which would not fit in a standard-sized locker.
The chain-wide locker rollout comes among numerous other Home Depot moves to up its omnichannel game. Earlier this year, the chain announced a list of supply chain improvements aimed at increasing the speed of delivery. Those included the building of 170 distribution facilities, 40 flatbed distribution centers for products purchased by professional construction customers and 100 new market delivery operation centers to facilitate home delivery. By the end of this five-year period of expansion, the chain hopes to be able to make same- or next-day deliveries to more than 90 percent of the U.S. population.
Home Depot has also made recent moves into offering home goods beyond the home improvement category. Early this year the chain acquired The Company Store, a bedding and bath-related online seller with a product offering and customer base similar to Bed, Bath & Beyond.