Designing a `Solution Killer'

Home Channel News, Nov 22, 1999 by Monica Toriello

Former Depot execs target women, boomers

ATLANTA -- Jim Inglis and Herb Biggers, the top executives at a year-old Atlanta-based company called Dekor, are keeping the details of their specialty retail venture under wraps. The two former Home Depot employees reveal only that Dekor's first store will carry "anything that has to do with color and style in the home," including paint, wallcoverings and countertops. It will be designed specifically for female shoppers and will offer installed sales and other services to meet the needs of baby boomers. The two told NHCN that they expect to open the first Dekor store in late 2000, to coincide with the launch of its online store at www.dekorstore.com.

Inglis and Biggers had two-year stints with flooring retailer The Maxim Group after they left Home Depot in late 1996. They've spent the last 12 months assembling their team and defining their home decor concept. During that period, they were sued by Home Depot, which alleged that Inglis, now Dekor's chairman and CEO, had improperly recruited staff from the Expo Design Center in Atlanta and stolen confidential information. Biggers was the Expo's store manager. He now serves as Dekor's president and chief operating officer.

Since settling the lawsuit in September, Inglis and Biggers have kept all information about Dekor confidential. But they did talk to NHCN about why they feel there is a niche for their company.

NHCN: Why Dekor?

Inglis: Without getting into the details of our plan, I will say that there are changes in the retail environment that will determine which retailers are going to be successful over the next 20 years. And these are the areas where we feel Dekor has great opportunities. First of all, as baby boomers enter their 50s and 60s, they will have different needs and will require different services than those currently offered by home centers. Secondly, digital technology will be a huge factor. There's a great deal of innovation that is changing the way people think of traditional stores, and that's allowing stores to enter people's homes through e-commerce.

Thirdly, we believe the female homeowner is severely underserved. Home improvement retailers today are still very heavily oriented towards the male. We want to remove the intimidation in the shopping experience for female customers, and I think by doing that we can even expand the market.

NHCN: All those issues -- boomers, the Internet, women -- are already on the radar screen of established retailers like Home Depot and Lowe's. What makes you think Dekor will be better?

Inglis: We don't think that any store right now is serving the market that we're targeting. The retail scene in the United States is dominated by category killers and warehouse stores, but that's not the case in the rest of the world, and I don't think that in the future that will be the case in this country either. I think who's really going to succeed are what I've termed "solution killers," and that's what Dekor will be. I've spent a lot of time working internationally [Inglis is a consultant to German retailer Hornbach and South America's leading home center chain, Chile-based Sodimac]. Hopefully we can bring somewhat of an international flavor to Dekor, a pulling together of best practices from the rest of the world.

Biggers: We are not going to fill Expo's niche, because Home Depot has done a tremendous job fine-tuning Expo, and they're already executing that niche superbly. Our concept is unique. Is Expo going to be a competitor to us? Of course. Any place where a consumer spends a dollar is a competitor to us. But we're designing a store that's different from what's already out there.

NHCN: Dekor, you say, will be targeted towards women. Does the Dekor executive team have any women on it?

Biggers: Verna Gibson, a past president of The Limited, is on our hoard of directors. One of our merchandising vps is Kathy Schaag Haffamier, who was very involved in the development of the Expo division when she was at Home Depot [Haffamier was a buyer]. Quite a few of our core group of officers are women, and we have some people who came from the fashion industry. We think we can greatly benefit from their knowledge as the clothing industry has done a terrific job of serving its clientele.

NHCN: What's the most difficult part of this venture?

Inglis: There really isn't one aspect of it that's the most difficult. It just takes a lot of time to put all the pieces together. One of the things we've managed to do, though, is identify who knows the best practices and form the best strategic alliances with people. We've been able to bring the right people into play. Now we just need to execute, and that takes time.

NHCN: But do you have the luxury of time? Take the e-commerce side of your business model: If you launch a site in late 2000, you'll be among the last-to-market. Players like Home Depot will have presumably established their e-brands. How, at that point, will you win customers?

Inglis: It remains to be seen what will happen with different companies' Web sites. That's not something we can control or change. What's important is the quality of what's produced, and we believe we'll produce a quality program on our time schedule. Besides, there's such a huge market for the type of product that we have to offer. We really do not subscribe to the Amazon.com logic that says that only the first survive. We believe that our "total solution" concept will be well-received by the market when we present it.