Chris Wilson works in an orange fish bowl.

He manages the Home Depot store in the shadow of corporate headquarters in Vinings.

Top executives peering from the highest floors can count customer cars in the parking lot. Product merchants often saunter through, with international vendors in tow, to check out displays. At lunch, some of the headquarters' 4,500 employees dash across the street to make a purchase.

And when Chief Executive Frank Blake is in town, he usually pops in for a cup of coffee from the in-store Dunkin' Donuts.

Pretty tough customers.

But Wilson isn't daunted by the task of running one of the most-scrutinized stores in the Home Depot chain.

The 2450 Cumberland Parkway store, which does a healthy $50 million in sales annually, is there to impress vendors, show off products and, above all, showcase Home Depot's latest merchandising ideas, while still catering to customers in Vinings, one of Atlanta's toniest neighborhoods.

Wilson's job is to make sure the store fits strategically with Home Depot's mission under Blake —- to refocus on the customer experience and the retail model that built the 30-year-old, do-it-yourself chain into a global, $77.35 billion business.

"For us, it feels like the most visible store, without a doubt," Blake said in a phone interview this week. "It's a great store to try out new merchandising sets and new concepts, just because it's right across from us."

That's unnerving proximity, said George Whalin, president and CEO of Retail Management Consultants in Carlsbad, Calif.

"I wouldn't want that job. He's the manager, but everybody is going to have their two cents to put into that thing," Whalin said. "He's got a microscope trained on his store."

Such a store, Whalin said, has to be "immaculately clean: There can't be a light bulb or a sign out. Everything's got to be better than perfect."

Wilson, as neat as the store he runs, is primed for the challenge. The 5-foot-8 Atlanta native sports well-groomed brown hair and a "Home Depot orange" TAG Heuer watch. He comes equipped with a 28-year-old's energy and has an easygoing smile.

On a recent day, he trots through the store, picking up trash and straightening displays.

Wilson gets it that the store's tidiness reflects on Home Depot's corporate image.

"It's unfair to employees to have a dirty store," he said, "and it's unfair to customers to have messy shelves."

He gets more visitors from headquarters in a single day than he did in two to three years at other Home Depot stores where he worked, he said. "I was not used to seeing the CEO," he added. "At first I was pretty nervous."

An employee of Home Depot since age 18, Wilson has managed the Cumberland store for nearly two years. It's the third store he has managed.

Managers of Store 121, as the Cumberland store is known inside Home Depot, have found the job to be a step up the corporate ladder. Several have been promoted to district manager or the head office.

So far, Wilson has impressed Home Depot's highest brass.

"You can't be too high-strung" as manager of the corporate store, CEO Blake said. "You've got to have a demeanor that accepts a lot of quote-unquote 'help,' without being too exorcised about it.

"Chris is terrific. Chris runs a very, very good store."

Wilson, who aspires to be a company vice president, said he was picked by the former regional manager to run Store 121 "because I kept a clean store." He previously managed stores in Dawsonville and Kennesaw.

He seems to have hit his stride at the Cumberland Parkway store. He walks about four miles a day as he cleans aisles, directs his team and assists customers. "You can't help customers from the back [office]," he said.

It may help, too, that Wilson was raised believing in the Orange creed —- that a Home Depot post is more career than job.

His father, George Wilson, 51, started working for the chain when Chris was 3. George Wilson is an assistant store manager in Lilburn. As one of his first jobs working in a store with his dad, Chris Wilson said he tried to keep his department extra clean to make his dad proud.

"He must have been listening to the stuff I didn't realize he was absorbing," said his father. "He would hear about the whole 'Orange attitude,' " meaning that Home Depot employees have ownership of their corner of the store.

"I used to be known as George's son," said the younger Wilson, smiling. "Now he's known as Chris' dad."

At the Cumberland Parkway store, Chris Wilson banters with dozens of workers while he pushes a cart filled with things that were out of place. A phone on his hip rings almost constantly.

He keeps an eye out for customers who need help. He stops to describe the difference between two flashlight sets to a customer.

At 180,000 square feet, the Cumberland store is almost twice as large as the average Home Depot big box, so more products can be displayed with wider aisles.

To hear Chris Wilson tell it, his store gets all the advantages —- like the latest gadgets and displays from vendors. Plus, associates learn more about the products, he said, because they meet with the vendors.

But there's a downside to being the "corporate store," said Doron Levy, a retail consultant who is president of Captus Business Consulting in Toronto.

While such stores tend to be a high priority, if they're not run properly, heads can roll.

Managers at a store near Shoppers Drug Mart headquarters in Canada recently lost their jobs when a new CEO was unhappy with the store's appearance, Levy said. "That illustrates the importance in priority of image and operation for these proximity stores."

Stores near headquarters can mislead executives, said Ben Ball, senior vice president of Dechert-Hampe, a Northbrook, Ill., retailing and manufacturing consultancy. "You begin to believe that the world looks like your supreme effort at perfection," Ball said.

He's been to the Wal-Mart near that chain's Bentonville, Ark., headquarters.

"It's absolutely stocked perfectly. It's a great example of a perfectly merchandised and maintained store."

Headquarters executives have to "make sure they don't deal with a sample of one," Ball warned.

To be sure, Home Depot's board members walk at least 12 stores annually. Blake visited more than 200 stores last year. He recently walked one in Boca Raton, Fla., with Home Depot co-founder Bernie Marcus.

Wilson doesn't warn his staff when visitors from corporate are coming because he expects them to be ready for anything. He understands Store 121's influence on shaping stores nationwide.

So in his view, he says, headquarters "is in the shadow of us."

A LOOK AT CHRIS WILSON

> Age: 28

> Years at Home Depot: 10

> Years at Cumberland store: 2

> Stores worked at: 8

> Stores managed: 3

> Stores worked at with his dad: 1

> Hours worked per week: 55

> Miles walked in store per day: 4

> Time he starts morning shift: 5 a.m.

> Energy drinks consumed in a day: 0 (down from 5)

HOME DEPOT'S HOME STORE

> Store square footage: 180,000

> Percent larger than average store: 60%

> Employees: 264

> Employees at the store each day: 130

> Annual store revenue: $50 million

 CHARLES W. JONES / Staff
CLOSE TO HOME 
A. Headquarters:
2455 Paces Ferry Rd.
B. Store: 
2450 Cumberland Pkwy.
Map shows location of Home Depot's headquarters in relation to the Cumberland Pkwy. store. Inset map shows area of detail in Cobb County.