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Home Depot is a monopoly? Here in my midwestern city in addition to Home Depot we have Lowes, Ace, Harbor Freight, plus access to online places like McMaster-Carr.

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In Marin County, 10 years ago, we had Yarbirds, Fairfax Hardware, and a bunch of other hardware stores.

They just couldn't compete with HD prices.

Oh yea----while the stores slowly closed, HD prices went up.

They are not the cheapest anymore.

(I guess this is the new/old business model? Open big, and offer rock bottom prices, with a country flair. (HD used to hire, and pay for trade specialists to help the customers. They used to pay almost a living wage. The employees were content, and somewhat friendly.).

Get the dupes used to your fantastic store/prices, and watch the competition put up Closing Sales signs.

Then raise the prices yearly.

Mr. Gekko it's brilliant.

Yup. Home Depot pulled this here and put most of the local hardware stores out of business. In addition to their prices being much higher now, they have substituted products of vastly inferior quality, to the extent that I actively avoid entire product groups there. But now I do not have another practical choice. I loved them; now, I hate them.

Last year I was at HD and all they had for one product was damaged inventory which they refused to replace.

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