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Built from Scratch: The Home Depot | 
 enlarge | Author: Bernie Marcus
Publisher: Random House USA Inc
Category: Book
List Price: £13.94
Buy Used: £0.96
You Save: £12.98 (93%)
New (3) Used (12) Collectible (1) from £0.96
Rating:  11 reviews
Sales Rank: 1098349
Media: Hardcover
Pages: 352
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.4
Dimensions (in): 9.6 x 6.5 x 1.2
ISBN: 0812930584
Dewey Decimal Number: 381.456830973
UPC: 029617024957
EAN: 9780812930580
ASIN: 0812930584
Publication Date: April 1999
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
Shipping: International shipping available
Condition: SUPER FAST SHIPPING, DISPATCHED SAME DAY FROM UK WAREHOUSE. NO NEED TO WAIT FOR BOOKS FROM USA. GREAT BOOK IN GOOD OR BETTER CONDITION. MORE GREAT BARGAINS IN OUR ZSHOP. amazon.co.uk/shops/awesome_books_001
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| Customer Reviews: Read 6 more reviews...
 A great book about a great company! August 20, 1999
Working in the Home Building Industry I have become very familiar with HOME DEPOT. This is a great story about one of the world's greatest companies!Everyone who shops at Home Depot should read it. I guess that means you need a copy for everyone in America!
Important reading for anyone with a house or a store. July 29, 1999
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
Even as I write this, Builder's Square is conducting its going-out-of-business sale in the Denver area. They probably should have started it here about four years ago when Home Depot arrived, because they really didn't have the ability to compete. By the time the Depot had five stores built, places like Builder's Square and Home Base came to resemble mausoleums more than home centers. The employees, when you could find them, were usually ignorant about the products they sold. The products were often in disarray on the shelf, with prices difficult or impossible to determine. I once had a cart piled up with about $400 worth of merchandise at a Home Base, but I had to walk out with nothing because the aisles were so piled up with junk that I was unable to maneuver the cart to a cash register. Built From Scratch tells the story well, without degenerating into an informercial, as other books such as Nuts (about Southwest Air) have done. And the authors tell of their prodigious achievement without letting it all swell their heads in the manner of Ross Perot or Al Dunlop. One could hope for more specificity in the matter of tactics. For example, how do they always snatch up prime locations for their stores? How, out of all the places in the world, did they arrive at India to be their supplier of slate floor tiles? Or, do they ever ask European governments that want them to set up operations how people can be expected to haul building materials to their homes/projects, when the price of gas is over five dollars a gallon. This book, and Home Depot itself, are rebuttals to all the sages who write of the coming economy of keyboards and telephones, and the simultaneous death of all manual employment. High tech is certainly the wave of the present and future, but I've yet to see the software program that keeps rain off your head, or that can perform the same function as a Pella window. Speaking of software, why is there no mention in this book of what database management the Home Depot uses? I would also like the authors to delve more deeply into the political issues on which, as a titan of retailing, they have such clout. Low flush toilets, for example. With the thousands (millions?) of toilets that are moving through their stores each year, I think they have a duty to speak out on what is a danger to every household that flushes: the 1992 law that requires all US manufacturers to make toilets that use no more than 1.6 gallons of water per flush. We know now that this is madness. If my household has had five back-ups and overflows in the first year of our 1.6 toilet (and we have), then we can reasonably multiply that number by several million to get the total number of back-up/overflows for the entire country. Multiply that number by several trillion to get the amount of harmful bacteria that is spread by these overflowing toilets, and you have the making of a health disaster. Maybe the old standard of 3.5 gallons was too much, but it's obvious at this point that 1.6 is not enough. And anyway, is it the proper role of the government in a free society to tell us how much water we may use to wash away our wastes? Probably the Depot's greatest accomplishment is to have done away with the old wholesale/retail dichotomy and its attendant inefficiencies and waste. What a thrilling sequel it would be to write about the development of one-click plywood purchases over the internet. Could a merger of Home Depot and Amazon be in the offing?
a great business story July 22, 1999
a wonderful story for anyone interested in reading about watching a company grow small to big .
 A decent business book, a fraud July 14, 1999
1 out of 1 found this review helpful
The book had it's good parts, sometimes inspiring. On the whole, it is an entertaining read with good insight on business and its ups and downs. I must say also, that to me it is a fraud. I shop at Home Depot often. I'll be damned if the service in the stores today is 1% as good as the authors (Marcus and Blank) describe it in the book. It's only proper that the founders would beat their chests about how great they are now, while HD itself detoriorizes from its former self. Don't get me wrong either, I shop there ... I'm a loyal customer. BUT I also know what HD USED to be like and it's definitely not the way it is now, the way it was described in the book. Hence, a fraud.So, if you want to know the "how", read the book. If you've ever been to a HD lately, don't read the book, it will just get you upset next time you walk into one of the stores.
 Made me want to work for Home Depot July 5, 1999
Great book for those who want to understand what it takes to create an organization as complex and large as Home Depot - a few lucky breaks, great focus on what's really important (customers and employees!), and a very strong culture and value system. There were great stories and anecdotes and good insights into where THD goes from here. The only downside to the book was how self-ingratiating it is - but I'm not sure there's any way to avoid this in a partial autobiography of a couple of 'regular' multi-billionaires - and it wasn't so bad that it was intolerable (pay attention Larry Ellison). I was so impressed by the message that I couldn't help but feel that this is a company that I'd definitely want to work for.
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