Moving rental forward at The Home Depot

The Home Depot Rental has been in the business of renting tools for about 25 years, but over the last few years, there has been a greater focus on growing the rental business by adding more locations and increasing the diversity of inventory.

Rental Management recently spoke with Tim Dugan, senior director, rental operations, and Tony English, senior director of merchandising, rental, about how The Home Depot Rental’s business strategy has evolved. An edited version of that conversation follows.

Rental Management: The Home Depot has been involved in tool rental for about 25 years, but the number of The Home Depot rental locations has remained fairly static at about half of the company’s 2,200 locations until now with the addition of 10 locations with more to come. Why now?

Tim Dugan: This shows our continued investment in rental. We have a huge advantage within The Home Depot. Ninety percent of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a Home Depot store. We have an opportunity to continue to provide the geographic convenience to our customers and our focus is on that steady growth. It is dependent on market conditions, customer needs, doing the research that we have related to equipment categories, classes, meeting the needs of the stores and the customers walking in the stores. We have 2,200 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico, so we will continue to invest and expand.

Learn more about The Home Depot’s plan to expand in rental in the November issue of Rental Management magazine. Click here to watch the full interview.

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