One of the greatest entrepreneurial success stories of the past twenty years

When a friend told Bernie Marcus and Arthur Blank that "you've just been hit in the ass by a golden horseshoe," they thought he was crazy. After all, both had just been fired. What the friend, Ken Langone, meant was that they now had the opportunity to create the kind of wide-open warehouse store that would help spark a consumer revolution through low prices, excellent customer service, and wide availability of products.

Built from Scratch is the story of how two incredibly determined and creative people--and their associates--built a business from nothing to 761 stores and $30 billion in sales in a mere twenty years.

Built from Scratch tells many colorful stories associated with The Home Depot's founding and meteoric rise; shows that a company can be a tough, growth-oriented competitor and still maintain a high sense of responsibility to the community; and provides great lessons useful to people in any business, from start-ups to the Fortune 500.

Great Stories

  "Ming the Merciless": The inside account of the man who fired Arthur Blank and Bernie Marcus
  "My people don't drive Cadillacs!" How Ross Perot almost got involved with The Home Depot
  "Take this job and shove it!" The banker who put his career on the line to get The Home Depot the loan that enabled it to survive
  "Folks, I tell ya, if these Atlanta stores were any bigger, we'd be paying Alabama sales tax." Home Depot's first good ol' southern advertising campaign


A Company with a Conscience

  When disasters like the Oklahoma City bombing or Hurricane Andrew happen, Home Depot associates don't ask for permission to respond. They react from their hearts--whether that means keeping their store open all night or being on the scene with volunteers and relief supplies.
  The Home Depot doesn't just contribute money to organizations like Habitat for Humanity and Christmas in April, but also provides its people to help lead and grow these community efforts.


Great Lessons

  Know your customer: In The Home Depot's case, customers don't pay for wider aisles and a pretty store, but for a wide assortment and low prices
  Why everyday low prices mean more sales overall: The marketing philosophy The Home Depot learned from talking with Sam Walton
  Market leadership: Why The Home Depot never goes to a major new market with plans to open just a few stores
  The strategy for profitable growth: How The Home Depot redefined its U.S. market from its $135  billion traditional "do-it-yourself" base to a much larger pond of $365 billion
  How to change the rules of the game: How The Home Depot bypassed almost all middlemen, allowing it to pass on huge savings to customers

Built from Scratch is the firsthand account of how two regular guys created one of the greatest entrepreneurial successes of the last twenty years.

Opening the First Store

"What the hell happened? Who screwed up the store? . . . Whatever time remained before the doors were scheduled to open for the first time, we sped around in forklifts, stomping on the brakes, scuffing up the flooring so it would once more look like a warehouse."

Customer Service

"If ever I saw an associate point a customer toward what they needed three aisles over, I would threaten to bite their finger. I would say, 'Don't ever let me see you point. You take the customer by the hand, and you bring them right where they need to be and you help them.'"

Giving Back

"When The Home Depot went public we realized that we had the financial capacity and wherewithal to give back to the communities where we did business. There is a concept in Judaism called tzedaka, which means 'to give back.' It is considered a mitzvah, a good deed, to give to someone who doesn't have, and we believe strongly in giving back to the community."

Selling the Vision

"We had to be psychologists, lovers, romancers, and con artists to get vendors aboard. Our ability to paint a picture of how that would take place--lowest prices, widest selection, and great customer service--was what convinced skeptical manufacturers to sell merchandise to us during the early years."

The Importance of Values

"I have never had anybody work for me in retailing who didn't work for me out of love, as opposed to fear. We carried this approach into building The Home Depot. We care about each other and we care about the customer. The things that we do for customers inside and outside the stores demonstrate our commitment to them. And then when something happens within the company, we circle the wagons. We help each other."

Average Customer Review: ( 31 customer reviews )
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Instead what you get is the CEO and CFO of another home improvement company starting Home Depot along with an investment banking friend that lands them in front of a potential investor that happens to be a billionaire (Ross Perot). Somehow they don't seem like just regular guys anymore.

The information in the book is okay, but it was really hard for me to get past this outrageous title that is nothing more than a lie. There are better business books out there on how to start a successful company from scratch. Try Sandra Kurtzig's CEO: How to Build a $200 Million Company from the Ground Up.

2 of 2 found the following review helpful:

Principles that can be applied to any businessApr 18, 2009
By Reader
In reading one of the less flattering reviews of this book, the reviewer took exception to the subtitle mentioning "regular guys" because of the connections and startup capital that was available to the founders. I think the reviewer in question has entirely missed the point.

First, there is a growing litany of "entrepreneurs" who have had access to as much or more capital as these gentlemen and then went on to squander this resource through self indulgence and generally incomprehensibly poor judgment. The point the authors made consistently throughout the book was that despite capital being critical to this venture, smart and calculating decisions were far more crucial to their success. Look at second generation wealth, second and third generation CEO's, or the offspring of celebrities for that matter, and try to convince anyone that they had a walk away advantage over the people who struggle to pioneer new concepts. Sad but true, knowing someone with a huge bank account-or someone who simply has a big bank account-does not guarantee success.

As an entrepreneur with a fledgling six year old company that was started on next to zero capital, we have steadily grown our company to 1.5 million in sales in much the same fashion as Home Depot but on a smaller scale of course. This book has been what I have been looking for to find a way to illustrate to our team and potential investors what we are capable of. Believe in the idea; go beyond any reasonable sense of effort to insure it works; constantly look for new opportunities and ways to reinvent yourself; reward the people who helped you get there; and through hard work and being better at what you do, inadvertently punish anyone who tried to stop you or rip you off.

This book is about not being too impressed because you're the "boss". It's about taking a true sense of satisfaction that you impressed your clients with over the top service, which is much harder to carry out on a system wide basis than anyone who hasn't been there can understand. It's about inventing a new mouse trap, perhaps against anyone's better judgment, and watching it succeed. I would hazard a guess that the aforementioned reviewer has never been an entrepreneur or has been swatted down when he/she has attempted to start a business. This is the only way I can fathom someone harboring such animosity towards a title to the exclusion of what Home Depot has accomplished.

I think that it's also important to take note of the fact that Home Depot took everyone on both large and small. Of course they had financing behind them, but so did some other large concerns they competed with. More importantly, in my opinion they prospered with the kind of customer service which is often lauded upon small business but in actuality doesn't hold true as often as the legend would lead you to believe.

Companies, corporations, even people in civic groups can learn from what Home Depot accomplished. If you think they had an unfair advantage, my suggestion to you is make sure you never try to start your own business.

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