Dive Brief:
- The Home Depot on Thursday named Ted Decker CEO, effective March 1. Decker currently serves as the retailer’s chief operating officer. A replacement for Decker was not named.
- Decker succeeds Craig Menear, who will remain on as chairman of the board, according to a company press release. Menear has held the chief executive role since November 2014.
- Decker joined Home Depot in 2000, and in addition to being the company’s COO, he has held various roles including chief merchant and executive vice president of merchandising, and senior vice president of retail finance, pricing analytics and assortment planning.
Dive Insight:
After about seven years with Menear at the helm, Home Depot has looked to its own team for its next leader.
The timing of the appointment follows a pattern around Home Depot’s previous CEOs’ tenures, as pointed out by Telsey Advisory Group analyst Joseph Feldman. Before Menear, Frank Blake held the top spot from 2007 to 2014, and before that Robert Nardelli from 2000 to 2007. The Home Depot’s next CEO comes with more than two decades of leadership experience at the retailer, which Feldman said will lead to a “seamless transition.”
“Ted has grown with the company by taking on expanded roles of leadership from his time in Strategic Business Development, Finance and Merchandising to leading our day-to-day interconnected operations in his role as President and COO,” Menear said in a statement. “His ability to blend the art and science of retail is exactly what is needed in the next phase of growth for The Home Depot.”
Decker currently serves as Home Depot’s chief operating officer.
Courtesy of The Home Depot
The company in late 2017 introduced its “One Home Depot” multi-year strategy, which included investments into its stores, associates, “interconnected customer experience,” and supply chain and delivery capabilities.
Home Depot has remained the leader in its sector, reporting third quarter net sales of $36.8 billion, a 9.8% increase year over year, while same-store sales increased 6.1% and U.S. comps rose 5.5%.
As the retailer wraps up its fiscal year, Feldman doesn’t expect Home Depot’s core strategy will be affected by the executive shuffle.
“[W]e expect Home Depot’s broader strategy to remain unchanged, given our view that Mr. Decker played a key role in designing the strategy as a key member of the executive committee for many years,” Feldman said in a note Friday.
