
Home Depot stocked shelves with empty boxes in its early days - gscott
https://www.cnbc.com/2018/06/01/home-depot-co-founder-ken-langone-on-the-early-days-of-the-business.html
======
bitsoda
On a related note, my grandfather used to give away a tub of ice cream to his
customers on their way out of his furniture store so they’d be forced to go
home and freeze it —- preventing them from shopping the competition in the
same day.

~~~
hyperpallium
> Wrigley started out as a soap salesman in his native Philadelphia. After
> moving to Chicago in 1891, he began offering store owners incentives to
> stock his products, such as free cans of baking powder with every order.
> When the baking powder proved a bigger hit than the soap, Wrigley sold that
> instead, and added in free packs of chewing gum as a promotion.

~~~
amelius
Chewing gum reduces appetite. I take one before entering a supermarket, and it
ensures I will not buy anything I don't need.

~~~
apexalpha
You could just make a list and stick to it.

~~~
majewsky
It's quite easy to influence your lizard brain's urges and impulses directly
through a one-time action, and much harder to manually override them through
continuous conscious interference.

~~~
Retric
You can minimize the effort. I only go down isles that have what I need, so I
can skip a lot of stuff without thinking about it. I avoid looking at the
racks at checkout or areas that don't have what I need which again means I
don't need to exercise self control.

~~~
martin-adams
Don't forget supermarkets stacks the stuff you don't need but may buy on
impulse at the end of isles, meaning you still have to pass them.

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forapurpose
> Home Depot had ... associates who are knowledgeable about the products, says
> Langone. "These people learned their business and, to this day, the heart
> and soul of the Home Depot are these 400,000 people that work in the
> stores," Langone says.

That is not at all my experience. They frequently don't even know inventory or
where to find products in the store, and even less often do they know much
about the products. Generally they are unmotivated, even relative to retail
sales employees.

EDIT: I want to be clear that I'm not at all criticizing the employees. It's
obviously a systemic problem; they are poorly paid, and my impression is they
are poorly trained and poorly treated, all for minimum age. I'm criticizing
management for creating this system and for making the BS claim in the quote,
and CNBC for letting it pass unchallenged.

~~~
ravenstine
I've noticed that most Home Depot employees use a specific question they ask
to overcome the fact they don't know anything about their inventory or home
improvement.

If you're looking for a specific product, they'll ask this:

"What are you using it for?"

To someone who rarely goes to Home Depot, this may come off as if the employee
actually knows something about home improvement and wants to help you by
understanding your nuanced situation.

What it really means is that they are clueless, so if you reply with "I'm
looking for Jasco paint thinner", they'll either point you to the paint
aisle(even though you've probably already been there) or they'll drag you
there and fumble around until you find the product before they do. If you're
really unlucky, they'll bring you to the wrong aisle or flag down another
clueless employee.

Going to Home Depot is an aggravating experience. Every time they ask me what
I'm looking for, I get this deer in the headlights expression for even the
most basic of things. Unless you're buying lumber, the employees don't seem to
understand concepts like "I'm looking for some little pieces of felt or rubber
to prevent my cabinets from being loud when they slam."

~~~
manigandham
These are minimum wage employees that would only really know the major
categories at best. What are you expecting? If you already know what you're
looking then why bother with them at all?

~~~
IanCal
> If you already know what you're looking then why bother with them at all?

Well in their examples it's about actually finding the item in the store,
rather than working out what to buy.

~~~
sokoloff
Use your phone to search for the item on the Home Depot website. On the
product detail page, there is a section that lists the Aisle and Bay where the
product is located in the particular store you're visiting. Huge timesaver
IME.

That doesn't help if you can't find the product on the web site or don't know
what to use, but if you just want to know where 1/2" copper elbows are, the
site will get you within 6 feet of them.

~~~
nlawalker
Huge thumbs up to this.

I basically shop at Home Depot from home and then go to the store and pick the
items from the bins. The mobile app works well if you're already in the store.

The only reason I don't just buy stuff from Amazon is because I happen to live
close to a Home Depot, and a) I want the items _now_ , b) I want to see the
items before I buy them, especially because c) there is a high probability
I'll want to return at least one thing I buy, and that's way easier at a
brick-and-mortar.

------
TaylorAlexander
I like the part where he paid people $1 to enter his stores. I just paid to
publish my first small book at a local print shop, and gave all the books away
at the Maker Faire. It gave me hope that in the future people might know me
well enough to want to buy them. Very much a fluff article, but it was a cute
story and I appreciate it.

~~~
rokhayakebe
Next time don't give it. Lend it. Get their email address to send them a
return label or reminder or something. Or better have, them ship it to the
next person and create a cult or sharing for your work within your community.

~~~
mseebach
Why? That seems terribly complicated for very limited benefit. (And it takes
_a lot_ more than that to start a cult)

~~~
bluntfang
Printing out a bunch of return labels and a sheet that says "please return me!
Here's my story" is complicated?

~~~
gjs278
yes. it is. I don't mail anything anymore. I'm not going to bother with this.

------
poulsbohemian
Even though this was just a fluff PR piece, there is a hint of the kind of
entrepreneurial creativity story that first drew me to HN.

~~~
nerdponx
I for one appreciate when an article's title is good enough that I don't need
to read the article.

~~~
marmshallow
For you and anyone else that didn't read the full article, there was another
single line that was interesting:

> To get customers to come into the first Home Depot store, Marcus gave away
> cash.

Golly gee, seems't the ancient hardware startups aren't so different from
today's computer startups!

~~~
vorg
> ancient hardware startups aren't so different from today's computer startups

It reminds me of the grossly fabricated download numbers some open-source
software products boast of to give the impression of a large user base. Not
sure if it really works when they add four zeroes.

------
gwbas1c
I used to live about 7 minutes from a Home Depot. Now my closest hardware
store is a small chain.

Home Depot's hours were much better. I could run out after dinner.

Last night I accidentally showed up at the local hardware store right after
they closed, and there was a steady stream of people checking the door. If
there was a Home Depot close by, they'd go out of business immediately just
because of their hours.

~~~
astura
The local place near me closes at 5:00, which is quite unusual for the United
States. It makes it impossible to get there on a weekday.

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rdl
This is the kind of "breaking rules" which startups should (and often must)
do; not the kind of stuff Theranos did.

~~~
makapuf
Why should deceiving be some kind of desirable conduct ? Either for start-ups
or the larger firms they become, trying to squash competition of startups, do
away with regulations etc. Of course many will do it and the more you get away
with the more edge you have - unless the customers vote with their wallets for
a fairer society.

~~~
jaypaulynice
You're not deceiving the customer. The problem is the customer depends on
other inputs to make a decision. 99% of the time the decision has no rationale
except social proof.

For example: If you went to buy 2 products next to each other at a store. They
both do the same thing and same price, which do you take? The one that your
neighbor bought or a random one?

For me whenever this happens, I most likely don't buy either unless I have a
very specific need to get it.

------
baybal2
It is popular with Chinese manufacturers doing "factory tours."

To make an impression of a "serious business," they stuff warehouses with
empty boxes. I once was a part of such factory tour where an impressed buyer
from a American big box retailer said "wow, there must be at least $10m of
stuff there" to giggles of people who were more knowledgeable in the trade.

------
kumarvvr
Interesting stuff. Similar to founders of Reddit filling up their site with
links to get some traffic going.

I guess every business has some sort of a story like this when it first
started.

~~~
echelon
Fake it until you make it.

~~~
EADGBE
True in all aspects of life; even business.

------
nimbius
as an engine mechanic for a midsize automotive repair chain, I catch my
management pulling stunts like this all the time. A few that come to mind:

\- The Michelin inflatable that actually cost us business because it was too
big for our mid-town location and consumed all available parking.

\- advertising that we inflate tires with Nitrogen for performance with every
new set of tires installed. Management runs us out of shield gas for welding
and has to cancel a major mechanical job for a fleet customer. Management
furious to learn shield gas is much more expensive than air.

\- on site oil recycling which was basically how we tried to spin managements
asinine decision to not pay the state oil recycling fee. Fined by the state
EPA, fined by the federal EPA, forced to pay six figures to a haz-mat disposal
company.

\- Free battery testing and AC testing cant fully be expensed in the system
because its too old, and results in an accounting imbalance that gets our
owners audited by both fed and state.

------
gist
When I started my first business (out of college) I got my first big contract
(that made the business and allowed me to hire real employees) by getting
people (who I knew) to act like they were working in the business when the
potential customer wanted to come by to 'inspect the operation'. It worked, we
got the contract (over a much much larger established vendor) and kept it for
many many years.

------
Uberphallus
It kinda makes me recall Sun Tzu's, and might not be the exact phrasing, "when
weak, appear strong; when strong, appear weak".

Similar ideas:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_tank)

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluff_(poker)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bluff_\(poker\))

------
keyle
Fake it till you make it is still a thing. It works. But don't deceive users
by cheating them or lying.

~~~
sschueller
Sadly it has come to the point of fake it even if people are exploited, hurt
or even die. [1][2][3]

[1] [https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/06/ntsb-autopilot-
steered-...](https://arstechnica.com/cars/2018/06/ntsb-autopilot-steered-
tesla-car-toward-traffic-barrier-before-deadly-crash/)

[2] [https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2018/03/14/sec-
el...](https://www.forbes.com/sites/matthewherper/2018/03/14/sec-elizabeth-
holmes-theranos-fraud/)

[3] [http://www.uberscandals.org/all/](http://www.uberscandals.org/all/)

~~~
icebraining
> "has come to the point"

It always was. Just look at the miracle medicine of the past.

------
mschaef
Just the other day I was reading about retailers that would do this with
perishable goods, just to give the impression of choice and there being plenty
to choose from. Home Depot doing this doesn't surprise me at all.

The comment linked here and one a few down:
[http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/05/foley-
brothe...](http://www.thedepartmentstoremuseum.org/2010/05/foley-brothers-dry-
goods-co-houston.html?showComment=1330978825336#c3857751209963757222)

------
dano
The Price Club, now part of CostCo, had employees park their car in the lot to
make the warehouse look popular and busy. Fake it till you make it in 1976.

------
Bucephalus355
> "So we put all over the store — all these shelves 20-foot high — we had
> these boxes and everybody thought, 'Oh my God! Look at all this
> merchandise!' But there was air in the boxes. There was no products”

This would not have struck me as unethical a few years ago, but with all the
brouhaha around tech companies and faking it until you making it (Theranos),
seems more concerning now.

------
slongfield
I've heard of this being done in other, smaller, hardware stores.

For instance, Harvey's Hardware in Needham, MA started off packing its shelves
with empty boxes to make the store look like it had more inventory:
[https://www.inc.com/magazine/19970701/1277.html](https://www.inc.com/magazine/19970701/1277.html)

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amelius
This reminds me of inflatable dummy tanks used in wars to deceive the enemy.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_tank](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dummy_tank)

------
happy-go-lucky
I did this, too, with my own drug store. I used to stock shelves with empty
cartons for different brand-name drugs because I didn’t have money to buy
enough of these and the store was not doing well.

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wyclif
This is just another form of 'fake it till you make it', similar to Reddit's
founders submitting stories until the site got off the ground, &c.

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EADGBE
Today it wouldn't matter; as you can't seem to find an associate to help you
with all the empty boxes up above.

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jackconnor
It's great because this is the type of quick-thinking hustle that is so useful
when building a startup.

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lastUsername
It was a standard practice to have empty boxes shops in the communist block.
The reason was the same, but it was a structural and permanent one.

------
amelius
"Fake it until you make it"

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tr33house
One word: LEAN

------
paradroid
#reddit

~~~
paradroid
Why on earth was this downvoted? Reddit started by creating fake users and
fake content - much like stocking shelves with empty boxes.

