Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Home Depot’s LV launch attracts do-it-yourselfers

Ten months after adding an e-commerce feature to its website, Home Depot may not be racking up super cybersales, but some local customers -- from do-it-yourselfers to construction contractors -- say the site is helpful for comparing prices.

Deborah Bousquet, office manager for Las Vegas-based Copper Creek Construction, said Home Depot's site is easy to navigate, but she still prefers that her staff go into the store to buy supplies.

"I've been using the site for research for the past six to nine months," she said. "But when you have a Home Depot on every corner, the online service is no big deal. It's faster for me to send a runner over to pick things up."

The Las Vegas Valley was the nation's first market in which the giant home improvement retailer rolled out the e-commerce feature, which allowed customers to order goods on the Internet and then either pick them up or have them delivered.

Don Harrison, spokesman for the Atlanta-headquartered company, said Southern Nevada was an ideal market to learn about cyber-shopping habits before expanding the service throughout the country.

"Las Vegas has a great sampling of people from general contractors to retirees to younger residents," Harrison said. "Plus, most people who live there are from other parts of the country where they probably visited a Home Depot in their (native) town."

Harrison said the site so far has been dominated by do-it-yourselfers, despite the area's giant commercial and residential construction industry.

"About 70 percent using the site are your ... weekend warriors," Harrison said.

Harrison said the site averages 100,000 "hits" per day from surfers throughout the nation. The site doesn't require visitors to register, however, so it's difficult to determine if the web visitors are repeat visitors, he said.

Earlier this year, Home Depot expanded the Internet service to web surfers in the 48 contiguous United States.

However, customers in only three markets -- Las Vegas, San Antonio and Austin, Texas -- have items trucked to them from their neighborhood Home Depot store.

Customers in other parts of the country receive items shipped from the nearest regional store.

"If you order something from Boise, Idaho, the items may not come from a Boise store because we may not have one, but (the items) will come from the store in that region of the Dakotas and Montana," Harrison said.

Harrison declined to release revenues being generated from online purchases or how much the giant retailer is investing on the cyber-venture.

Local employees, however, indicate sales are only modest so far.

"The Internet service is here to stay," Harrison responded, noting that the slow migration of construction managers to the web is not discouraging.

He noted that the web is just another channel for its customers to educate themeselves about the store and purchase its products.

Catherine DeHart, until recently an e-commerce specialist at the Home Depot near Eastern Avenue on the outskirts of southern Henderson, said the website is all about customer convenience.

Once logged onto HomeDepot.com, users type in their ZIP code and with a click they are brought to a page that allows them to order items from the store in that area.

"Every item in this store is on the Internet, and the items are categorized by department," DeHart said, referring to the Eastern Avenue store.

Each of the seven Home Depots in Southern Nevada has an e-commerce specialist like DeHart, who recently left Home Depot for another job.

At Home Depot, she said she spent four hours of her eight-hour work shift plugged into the Internet. It was her job to retrieve the orders and check on availability of items and quantities.

If the Eastern Avenue store is out of a particular requested item, a runner is sent to another neighborhood store to retrieve it.

"But that doesn't happen very often," she said.

Most orders are shipped to the customer's home or job site via United Postal Service or by a store delivery truck. Customers can also pick up web-ordered items at the store's "Will Call" area.

"This saves them the hassle of going through the aisles and picking out the items," she said.

Wanda Shaw, office manager of Valentine Construction, said she also uses the site for price quotes, but rarely purchases items online.

Instead, Valentine workers visit a Home Depot store four times a day.

"Home Depot has their lead items -- things they are pushing -- high up on the list, and if you don't want those particular brands, you have to go way down the list," Shaw said.

DeHart said that's not necessarily true. She said the website's pecking order is based on a brand's popularity.

"If it's a better selling item, it's higher on the list," she said.

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