A Matter of Time There are a few dissenters, but far more people believe that consolidation is coming, sooner or later. There are many good reasons for why it might or should happen, but nothing is more convincing than empirical evidence. Richardson says that, in the past, Case has received occasional calls from investors looking to buy the company. He now receives five or six times that many inquiries, and he says he knows his company is not the only one fielding such offers. “I’ve talked to others who say the same thing.”
Dwyer notes some of the new entrants into the marketplace as a sign that consolidation is coming. “Owens Corning decided it was going to franchise that basement system,” he says, referring to the very successful product that the company has rolled out in recent years. “When a large corporation like that decides to get into it, that tells you there are some big hitters coming.”
Then+Now:
Major retailers
1985
The Home Depot: 50 stores, $700 million in sales
Menard’s: 31 stores, $350 million in sales
Lowe’s: 282 stores, $2.072 billion in sales
2004
The Home Depot: 1,677 stores with Contractor Services available at 1,419 locations, $73.1 billion in sales
Menard’s: 198 stores, an estimated $7 billion in sales
Lowe’s: 1,087 stores, $36.5 billion in sales.
Lowe’s was the largest home improvement retailer in the country in 1985 and it held onto that ranking until 1989, when The Home Depot surpassed it. The following year, Lowe’s opened its first full-blown warehouse-sized store.
Source: Lowe’s and Menard’s data from Home Channel News; The Home Depot figures from the company