sprignaturemoves

This doesn’t really surprise me. Good for Lowe’s and Target.

I can’t stand Home Depot. Tomorrow is not soon enough for them to get the Lowe’s built in my town. It’s going in right across the street from Home Depot.

I’ve done a fair amount of work on my house and have purchased well over $3000 of home improvement stuff over the last few years. Nearly every time I go into Home Depot — normally late morning on Saturday, there’s one or two registers open and 10 people in each line. Aside from the fact that there aren’t enough registers open, the cashiers don’t know what the heck they are doing.

Don’t even get me started about the Tuff Shed (which is real nice, BTW) we bought during a Home Depot promotion a few years ago. My wife did a masterful job explaining basic math to at least three people whose only argument was “well, this is what the computer says.” I wanted to rip someone’s face off.

(BTW, it’d be unfair of me to not give some props to the ONE guy at Home Depot that is really helpful. I don’t even remember his name, but you can’t miss him — balding dyed black hair, goatee, big silver loop earrings and some tattoos… you’ll know him when you see him. Last I noticed he was working back in flooring.)

And about Wal-Mart…all you have to do is spend a few minutes reading Behind the Counter and Consumerist you’ll know what I mean.

Oh yeah, they’re building a Target in my town, too.

Only blaming “Big Oil” may not be the best way to explain why gas jumps $.25 right before a holiday weekend. After reading this it helped me get more of a handle on all of the factors involved in setting the price of gas.

As a closet economist, this article certainly piqued interest. Looks like Wal-Mart is ratcheting up it’s efforts to compete with Target and other more trendy stores — stores that aren’t only about price, but brand recognition.

Sounds good, but I have a feeling that Wal-Mart is going to have a hard time wooing and maintaining supplier relationships with some of the brand names.   I think Wal-Mart will find it hard to sell certain products. They can’t bully everyone who doesn’t want to be associated with “low prices, always” a.k.a. “cheap and disposable.” Don’t forget about Snapper. Wal-Mart can’t strong-arm everyone.

It’d be really interesting to see their strategy on the supply-side.

Ahem. Well, let’s see here. Someone actually drinks straight black coffee at Starbucks? Shocking. Sorry Joe. Dunkin’ Donuts coffee has no “oomph.”