Evan Schuman's StorefrontBacktalk

A year into the job as Home Depot’s VP for specialty channels, Michael Cooper said that his chain is just starting to realize how mammoth a true E-Commerce rollout is and that it’s a price it’s willing to pay. “We’re going to come into the ‘90s, allow returns in the stores, and allow store gift cards to be used as tender online,” Cooper was quoted as saying in this wonderful story from Multichannel Merchant. “It will require modification of 15 legacy systems and that goes all the way down to the store’s POS systems. But the more we can convince the powers that be that the multichannel shopper is more valuable than the store shopper, the easier it will be to get the job done.”

Cooper also said that Home Depot CEO Frank Blake candidly concedes E-Commerce errors. Blake “says that if there’s anything we screwed up in 2007, it’s our e-commerce channel. He says that, 10 years from now, experts are going to look back and hope we figured out how to fix it. That gives me a clear understanding that he knows the importance of the channel.”