Darn it – Home Depot is at it again!

Let me say first as I begin this entry that the many good people at Home Depot are not the issue that I am addressing herein.

When we open new stores that are near Home Depot (The Home Depot, Inc.
(Public, NYSE:HD) locations I think there is a natural human emotion of territorialism. I know when someone opens a flooring store near one of my stores I am not thrilled about it either.

The difference is, perhaps, how the emotions are handled.

In this case we have opened a new store in Maple Grove, MN. It is a nice big store and it happens to be in the same complex as Home Depot as well as Discount Tire right off the freeway.

As a component of our normal promotions we have yard signs that we use from time to time.

Typically these signs are placed near the road or entrance to our location. In this case the location has multiple shared entrances:

We placed our directional signage near those when we first started opening. But low and behold we noticed that our signs kept disappearing. Now I am no scientist, but normally the signs are physically static and do not posses any means of conveyance on their own.

We placed new signs, again the signs disappeared. These signs really grow legs in Minnesota!

We touched base with our neighbor after rumors about our signage and the Home Depot dumpster became more and more pervasive. Basically the message was simple. We’re just some new neighbors working to put food on the table; please don’t remove our signs. Maybe it was unfair for us to suspect HD rather than Discount Tire, but let’s just call it gut instinct.

So we placed new signs, and this time we set up surveillance.

Here a gentleman has one of our signs in his hands already. This is about 10 minutes after we put the signs out!

Here the same gentleman is cutting the balloons that were attached to the signs. (sidenote: both signs and balloons cost us $$.)

The signs are on the move and leaving the area.

Here we pull up in a car and ask him what he is doing with our signs. Now in fairness to this person I edited out his face. But I can tell you in this picture he had a very surprised look on his face. Since he knew we were onto him he moved the signs to a different area in the complex. However, we believe had we not confronted him they would have disappeared like the prior signs.

I should also note that HD also puts signs in this same area from time to time and WE do not remove them, move them or otherwise disturb them.

We did file a police report and I won’t bore you with the details, but suffice it to say both companies would be better off working this out rather than making it into a problem.

In general my plea here is for a less emotional reaction from our competition to iFLOOR opening a store near you. We are just regular folks working to make ends meet. Big Orange will not be impacted in any measurable way by little orange. We’re just a little tiny blip compared to the 80 Billion dollar power house that is Home Depot.

Now I will admit that emotions can get the better of ANY of us so this is not about personal blame or criticism. My quest here is just to say, “Can’t we all just get along.” (to Quote Rodney King)

Conflicts of this sort never have a winner, so let’s work together to cultivate a more productive relationship where we are neighbors.

Thanks for listening.