Home Depot makes impact: Competition for local dollars heats up on Home Services

Dec

Home Depot makes impact: Competition for local dollars heats up

posted by admin in Home Depot

The scene during the first several days of The Home Depot’s Guam store opening last month unleashed island consumers’ enthusiasm to shop as robustly as when Kmart opened on island a decade ago.

As soon as Home Depot opened, consumers quickly snapped up big-ticket appliances, power tools, doors and windows, lighting fixtures, Christmas trees and other goods from the new big-box store’s shelves.

But the thousands of consumers who opened or will open their wallets at Home Depot are the same people who might either curtail spending or no longer shop at the local hardware, tile, lumber and other construction materials stores.

Double-digit price discounts for certain merchandise as well as no-interest, no-payment arrangements for six months — which Home Depot also offers — are some of the ways a few smaller retail stores are trying to draw customers in.

At the Guam Tile Center, owner Paul Yu said, the store has had to keep most prices unchanged the past two years — even when international fuel prices have caused cost increases to shipping and manufacturing.

Gary Hiles, the Guam Department of Labor’s chief economist, has said the initial boost in Guam’s job numbers from the local Home Depot’s opening could only be temporary.

Technorati : Consumers Quickly, Home Depot, Price Discounts