Home Depot has been a dominator in the retail industry with years averaging annual earnings gains ranging from 30% to 40%, with last years sales totaling $38.4 billion. However, this year the company reported revenues that seem to be in a down-spiraling situation. This month the “orange giant” is being faced with a serious drop in its earnings per share and many analysts are contributing this drop to the possibility that Home Depot may of hit the wall. With analysts banking on a 25% growth rate, Home Depot barely managed to achieve half of that; reporting only 13% in its fiscal third quarter earnings. There are many reasons for this outcome and there are ways that Home Depot plans on overcoming these “threats” that are reducing their earnings.
             “Whenever there has been this kind of slowdown, we’ve turned our back to our basic kind of nature, which is to be piranhas. We will be very aggressive in the marketplace to gain as much market share as we can”, says Mr. Arthur M. Blank, co-founder of Home Depot. In making this statement, Mr. Blank was probably referring to their immediate and emerging rival, Lowe. Lowe, the countries No.2 appliance seller, is attempting to gain portions of the market in which Home Depot now has control over. In an attempt to gain market share over Home Depot, Lowe has been opening stores local to that of Home Depot’s stores. Although Home Depot has name recognition it does not offer a variety of appliances, as does Lowe; which has been for approximately 45 years and actually holds the number 2 spot in home appliances sales. In an effort of breaking that product line advantage that Lowe has, Home Depot will attempt to “copy” its competition by implement!
             ing not only appliances but also other methods of overcoming this potential rival.
             This dramatic decrease in sales revenue could also be attributed to market saturation of Home Depot. Con...