Home Depot vs Lowe's

    I have to be honest – this particular story came as a shock to me, and I’ve been digesting it and trying to figure out what to write since it broke.  Last week, multiple news outlets reported that HD Supply was being purchased by Home Depot for $8.7 Billion.

    On the surface, Home Depot is getting a good deal, considering they sold most of their stake in HD Supply in 2007 for $10.3 billion.  Home Depot kept 12.5% of HD Supply stock as a passive investment until 2015, selling it just prior to purchasing Interline Brands.

    So, what does this mean for the MRO supply market? What does this mean for current customers of HD Supply? What about customers of Interline Brands (now Home Depot Pro)? How will this impact Lowe’s and their turnaround efforts led by Home Depot alum Marvin Ellison?  Well, I have some opinions – and many of them won’t be popular.

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    picture of success

    I’ve had a lot of questions about what happened to my website over the last year, and I’ve finally dedicated the time to securing it and reloading as many of the posts as I could.  I also made sure I updated the User Experience and overall performance while I was at it.

    All our sites are now using LiteSpeed servers and everything seems to be working correctly both on the servers and at Cloudflare.

    I’ll be trying to churn out a couple of posts a week and hopefully a video or two here and there.  I promise to try and keep them relevant and entertaining.

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    They shouldn’t be selling products because it creates a conflict of interest. Consulting firms are hired to bring tools into a business that the business doesn’t have or can’t afford normally. They bring experience and skillsets that enable real change and shine light on issues in the company that sometimes can’t be seen by anyone but an outside party.

    They also bring the ability to tell it like it is without fear of reprisal, because they are an outside agent hired to come in and do a job.  Good consultants should have broad experience and up-to-date market intelligence that lets them look at a clients current process and agreements and make suggestions to improve their results.

    Having finders-fee based relationships and commission-based income from vendors and service providers makes you a broker at best…not a consultant.

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