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When Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank opened the first Home Depot store in Atlanta in 1979, they forever changed the hardware and home-improvement retailing industry. Marcus and Blank envisioned huge warehouse-style stores stocked with an extensive selection of products offered at the lowest prices. Do-it-yourselfers and building contractors can browse among 40,000 different products for the home and yard, from kitchen and bathroom fixtures to carpeting, lumber, paint, tools, and plant and landscaping items. If a product is not provided in one of the stores, Home Depot offers 250,000 products that can be special ordered. Some Home Depot stores are open twenty-four hours a day, but customers can also order products online. Additionally, the company offers free home-improvement clinics to teach customers how to tackle everyday projects like tiling a bathroom. For those customers who prefer not to “do it yourself,” most stores offer installation services. Knowledgeable employees, recognizable by their orange aprons, are on hand to help customers find items or to demonstrate the proper use of a particular tool.

Currently, Home Depot employs more than 371,000 people and operates over 2,200 Home Depot stores in the United States, Mexico, Puerto Rico, China, the Virgin Islands, Guam, and Canada. It operates four subsidiaries: Home Depot International Inc., Home Depot USA, Inc., HD Development of Maryland, Inc., and Interline Brands. The company is the largest home-improvement retailer in the world, with over $78 billion in revenues. Home Depot continues to do things on a grand scale, including putting its corporate muscle behind a tightly focused social responsibility agenda.

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