BEIJING — The Chinese delegation had traveled halfway around the world to visit the U.S. stores of American giant Home Depot, but it was hardly love at first sight.
The warehouse-style buildings the Chinese saw in New York, Washington, San Francisco and Los Angeles were too simple. “They were not as attractive as our stores,” says Lu Wenwei, an executive at Orient Home, China’s top home improvement company.
But Home Depot (HD) got one thing right. “Their sales were much better than ours,” Lu recalls.
His delegation, touring the USA in 2003, visited Home Depot stores and pocketed everything that was free. Lu’s 10-man team flew home “with two or three suitcases each, stuffed with leaflets, promotional materials and all the books we could find,” says Lu, director of the president’s office in Beijing.
Back in China, they sifted the material. “We basically copied Home Depot’s methods,” Lu acknowledges, citing the uniforms, welcome badges, advertising fliers, management software and free returns policy. “But it’s not an intellectual property problem,” Lu insists. “What we studied was all on the surface.”
Then Orient Home, with 22 outlets nationwide, set about tailoring the lessons it learned to the tastes of China’s fast-growing but inexperienced middle classes.
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