With Home Depot building for the future in Pottstown, local lumber company hammers home the idea that market is big enough for two.

By Anthony G Noel
- Special to the Mercury

It looms across Armand Hammer Boulevard. A building so large, one wonders if all that space is really needed - or if it was built that big simply to accommodate the huge letters attached to the facade, spelling out its name. From the parking lot at A.D. Moyer Lumber & Hardware, one can see those brilliant orange letters just above the road surface, big as life, even though the structure they identify sits hundreds of yards away. It's then that the scale of the building really sinks in. More than 114,000 square feet. Parking for 628 cars. Estimated employees: 150
The letters read: THE HOME DEPOT. And underneath, smaller but no less imposing: PENNSYLVANIA'S HOME IMPROVEMENT WAREHOUSE.

Though the folks at A.D. Moyer have anticipated and prepared for it for years, the irony is inescapable. Home Depot, marketer extraordinaire of lumber, hardware and a dizzying array of home improvement items, and one of the biggest of the so-called "big box" retailers, is moving in across the street - just in time for Moyer's 60th anniversary.
Prepared as they may be, this "big box" is probably not the birthday present Moyer's had in mind.
Moyer's three Pottstown-area stores have a combined square footage of 21,620, and staff totaling about 110. And parking spaces? Well, suffice to say it's nowhere near 600. So how does the local store plan to compete? Crazy as it may sound, by not competing at all.

"I'm not going to be naive and say (Home Depot) is not going to take some of our business," said A.D. Moyer's Director of Marketing. Still, despite coming in every morning and seeing the big box across the street go up, he said he's "cautiously optimistic."

Quality and an emphasis on serving the needs of building professionals are the traits he believes will allow for Moyer's continued growth and prosperity after Home Depot's opening.
That opening is tentatively set for "late April or early May," according to company spokesperson Katrina Blauvelt.
Speaking via telephone from Home Depot's Atlanta headquarters, Blauvelt said moving in across the street from a competitor is "something that has happened in quite a few markets." In many such situations, she noted, the other store is Lowe's, Home Depot's prime competitor in the retail home improvement products sweepstakes.

As for the Pottstown store. Blauvelt said, "It's probably a case where this is just a good traffic location, so naturally we'd want to be there."
" Competition is good for the consumer, " she added, noting that in cases where Lowe's and Home Depot are situated adjacent to each other, "neither store has ever closed."
His own research shows that Moyer's, while making some distinct changes, is already well positioned to handle Home Depot's entry into the market.

"Not as much of our clientele overlaps with (Home Depot) as people would tend to think," he said.
"We do more with builders, developers, contractors." That clientele comprises 85 percent of Moyer's market, he noted.
Blauvelt said Home Depot has no numbers on the percentage of building professionals it sells to, saying only that the chain targets "homeowners and professional customers as well."
In preparation for Home Depot's arrival, A.D. Moyer has redoubled efforts at making professionals its central focus. A company brochure addresses head-on the issues raised by Home Depot's opening, and cites Moyer's commitment to quality and service.

"In addition to the education," he noted, "we're doing more specific things, as far as changing our product line so that we're avoiding being in direct competition."
He noted the changes are "primarily with power tools, hand tools, in-store hardware type things. We don't want to be selling the same things that they do.

"They do such a terrific job of marketing, like they could sell the same power tool that we do, same model number and everything, but their package comes with fewer accessories. You know, those are the types of things that you don't even want to get into (from a marketing standpoint) because you can't explain that to customers."
The changes are already paying dividends.

"It's working out real well in conjunction with our (primary) clientele, which is the professional. We're upgrading our tool line to the more heavy duty, contractor-model type stuff."
Though the huge majority of Moyer's business comes from tradespeople, "We do obviously bleed into the individual homeowners market," he said, "especially here in Pottstown more than our other locations. But even that is more of the type of clientele that is really very quality conscious."

Beyond high-quality products and special services (Moyer's, he claims, is one of the last lumber dealers in the area to offer free delivery), he said his firm has some niche businesses which further enhance the company's value to the professional market.

"We have our own millwork shop in Gilbertsville, where we do pre-hung doors, build mantles, a lot of special order stuff, mouldings, lots of millwork that (Home Depot) can't get it, or it's not so much that they can't get it, it comes down to the personnel."

Providing such custom products would require the chains to set up manufacturing, a very different pursuit than retailing, indeed - but a mixture which works well on a smaller, local scale.

"These floor trusses we stock," he said, pointing out an "I-joist," which is made up of "two-by" material top and bottom with a middle section of chipboard, "that's the biggest thing in homebuilding today. A lot of engineered lumber."
He believes the market is big enough for Moyer's, Home Depot and even Lowe's, if and when they move in.
Home Depot's Blauvalt said Moyer's planned approach "is absolutely a way for the market to be big enough. They end up doing things that we don't do, like services.

"The key is that if you don't have a niche already to find one - and if you do, to enhance it or catch up with your customers' needs." A.D Moyer believes already having Home Depots in nearby locations has strengthened Moyer's standing among professionals.

"In certain markets where (local lumber dealers) haven't had any exposure to (Home Depot), those are the companies that usually get hurt the worst, in the research that I've done," he said. "We don't have that. We have the advantage, actually, of having (Home Depots) down in King of Prussia and over in Reading. All of our customers that deal with us have dealt there if they want to already, so they already know the routine, they know what it's like."

And just in case A.D. Moyer's research, special services, and the company's 60 years of existence aren't enough to convince you that they'll survive the invasion of the big boxes, there's one more thing to consider: Moyer's experience in Bethlehem.

There, since 1983, the company has maintained an approximately 7,500-square foot store focused, as you might expect, on serving the needs of the building professional.
And, in 1994, just in time for Moyer's 55th anniversary, a Home Depot opened in Bethlehem. Less than one block away.