Home Depot hopes a new Locust Grove distribution center the size of more than 17 football fields will help it get products to online consumers faster.
The Atlanta-based home improvement giant opened the 1 million-square-foot “fulfillment center,” one of three planned over the next 12 months, on Monday. The facility south of Atlanta brings 125 jobs, which Home Depot says it will eventually increase to 300.
The company’s move is designed to keep pace with growing consumer expectations of quick delivery of online orders, which make up about 3 percent on Home Depot sales. Online sales are up 50 percent year-on-year, the company said.
Increasingly, consumers expect packages delivered in two days or less, and the new distribution centers (the other two will be in Perris, Calif., and Troy, Ohio) will allow Home Depot to meet that criteria for 90 percent of customers, the company said.
But Home Depot can expect stiffening competition. Online giant Amazon suggested in December it would push the industry even farther in the next four years by using drones to deliver packages 30 minutes after a completed customer order.
The Locust Grove distribution center will stock about 100,000 products. That compares to the 35,000 products offered in a typical Home Depot bricks-and-mortar store.
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