Home Depot

New York City -- The impact of Hurricane Irene on retail sales is likely to split among category lines: Home-improvement stores selling emergency preparation products and clean-up items are likely to benefit the most from the storm, while apparel retailers and department stores selling non-essential items are likely to take a hit. Industry analysts noted that big-box stores, drug stores and supermarkets all experienced sales surges prior to Irene’s arrival, but the biggest winners are likely to be home centers. In fact, pre-and-post storm sales may aid same-store sales at Home Depot and Lowe’s each by 1% point in

Hurricane Irene sent East Coast shoppers into stores to stock up on essentials last week instead of the clothes, notebooks and other supplies that retailers were counting on selling as children get ready to go back to school.

As long as the NBA lockout is on, Boston Celtics guard Delonte West, may not have playing or coaching basketball in his future. Earlier this week, West tweeted that he was applying for a job at Home Depot, and the seven-year vet says that’s not the only retail job he’s looking into.

Lowe's has joined the march to in-store mobility with its deployment of approximately 42,000 handheld devices to its U.S. and Canadian stores. The home improvement retailer has begun the rollout to its 1,700-plus stores and expects it to be complete by the end of fiscal 2011, at the end of January 2012. "Our goal is to make home improvement simple for customers and for our employees," said Lowe's CEO Robert Niblock during a recent conference call. "Leveraging Apple's iPhone technology, our employees will check inventory availability, access how-to videos and utilize lowes.com from the aisles of the store." Home

Lowe's reported weaker-than-expected sales in the second quarter as home owners put off big renovations in an anemic U.S. economy. Sales at the second-largest home improvement chain loading...      [LOW  Loading...      ()   ] behind Home Depot loading...      [HD  Loading...      ()   ] rose 1.3 percent to $14.54 billion but missed analysts' average estimate of $14.75 billion. "Despite some recovery in our seasonal business, our performance for the quarter fell short of our expectations," said Robert Niblock, Lowe's chairman, president and CEO. Net income was $830 million, or 64 cents a share,

Online lingerie retailer BareNecessities.com announced that it's named Jay Dunn as its new chief marketing officer. Dunn was the former vice president/chief marketing officer of Lane Bryant and the man behind the company's controversial "Red Bra" campaign that was banned from ABC for being "too sexy."

It’s no secret that U.S. retail sales collapsed in 2008 and 2009 because of the recession. But several of the largest retailers consistently performed poorly between 2005 and 2010 for reasons that go beyond the recession.

In this issue's Shop Talk department, we thought we'd share some 
"Letters to the Editor" we received over the past several months.

Over the last few years, Home Depot has expanded its retail stores aggressively, adding more than 200 outlets annually. However, the retailer has recently embarked on a $1.1 billion program aimed at improving its web presence while planning to dramatically reduce the number of new store openings to around 10 in 2011.

They spend hours each week touting favorite products, sharing home improvement tips and answering questions about everything from installing ceramic tile to venting a mircrowave. The Home Depot's social media store associates are part of a new hybrid group that spends two days each week managing the retailer's how-to community and creating content for use across the company.