SEQUIM — Bill Gerdes, general manager of the Clallam Cooperative/True Value hardware store in Sequim, has dealt with “big box” retailers before.
He was with the store when the Ernst chain came to town several years ago, representing a new and much larger form of competition.
“We freaked out, kind of, because it was the first time we’d had something like that,” he said.
After six months, however, sales had grown at the co-op.
Ernst was weak on service and ended up sending customers his way, Gerdes said.
Then, conveniently, the overextended Ernst company went bankrupt.
That’s not a likely ending for The Home Depot, which is coming to the North Olympic Peninsula by opening a 140,000-square-foot store in Sequim on Thursday.
But Gerdes and other local businesses feel confident they’ll survive this big box incursion as well.
Huge retailer
That may seem overly optimistic in light of the Atlanta-based company’s eye-popping statistics:
* Nationally, Home Depot stores boast 22.3 million customers — about equal to the population of Texas — each week.
* Company sales of nearly $65 billion in 2003 were roughly the same as the gross national product of Chile.
* There are about 300,000 Home Depot employees and 1,800 stores in the United States, Canada, Mexico and Puerto Rico.
But a David-vs.-Goliath slugfest doesn’t have to take place just because a retail hardware behemoth is moving to town.
People who run businesses affected by The Home Depot’s arrival say they can continue to thrive — as long as they know what they do well and continue to do it.
“We’ve anticipated the arrival of big boxes for several years now,” Gerdes said.
