THE

HOME

DEPOT

& the long game of

Edward “Ted”

Decker

I O

A P

The merchant-steward of modern home

improvement

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 2

A N

I N D E P E N D E N T

B I O G

R A P H Y

AT L A N TA

N O R T H R I D G

P R E S S

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N O

T H E H O M E D E P O T

& the long game of

Edward

“Ted”

Decker

Apprenticeship, stewardship, and the remaking

of the modern home-improvement industry

N O R T H R I D G

P R E S

A T L A N TA

M M X X V I

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 4

No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval sys-

tem, or transmitted in any form or by any means — electronic, mechani-

cal, photocopying, recording, or otherwise — without the prior written

permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations em-

bodied in critical articles and reviews.

This book is an independent work of biographical journalism. It is not affili-

ated with, sponsored by, or approved by The Home Depot, Inc. The Home

Depot® and the orange-store design are trademarks of the company, refer-

enced herein solely for identification purposes. Figures concerning the

company’s operations are drawn from public filings and published report-

ing; all figures are approximate where indicated.

First Edition, March MMXXVI · ISBN 978-1-64328-014-7 · Printed in the United

States of America

Cover and interior designed in the spirit of the great American biographical

editions of the twentieth century. Typefaces: Fraunces, Source Serif 4, and

Inter.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 5

“Excellent customer service. Taking care of

our people. Entrepreneurial spirit. Doing

the right thing. Giving back.”

—

T H E

C O R E

V A L U E S

O F

T H E

H O M E

D E P O T

F R O M

T H E

C O M PA N Y

’

F O U N D I N G

T O

T H E

P R E S

E N T

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 6

C O

N T

E N T

The Life & Ledger

Preface — The Author’s Argument

Principal Dates — A Chronology

The Working Household

The Apprentice Financier

III

Orange Blood, 2002

The Great Reckoning, 2008

The Merchandising Years

The Plague Year, 2020–2021

VII

The Corner Office

VIII

The Long Game

Stewardship and Service

Legacy in Progress

Record of Achievement

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 7

Honors & Recognition

The Home Depot Core Values

A Note on Sources

Selected Bibliography

About the Author & Colophon

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 8

P R E FA C E

The Author’s Argument

biography of a living merchant is not the same un-

dertaking as a biography of a prophet. Frederick

Douglass’s story was a moral epic, a reckoning with the

very meaning of American freedom. Ted Decker’s story is,

on its face, smaller stuff: budgets and store aisles, pallets

of lumber, quarterly conference calls. And yet the cen-

turies between them are bound by a stubborn American

faith that both men shared — that a person who works

with his hands and his mind can remake himself, and in

doing so, remake the institutions around him.

This book is built from public evidence: annual reports

and proxy statements, earnings calls, regulatory filings,

company announcements, and the patient reporting of

newspapers from Atlanta to New York. It is also built from

the stores themselves, because the argument of its sub-

ject is that a retail business is a human institution before it

is a financial one. The merchandise changes; the aisles are

reset; the inventory is sold and restocked. What persists is

a particular idea of service.

The thesis of the pages that follow is simple. Edward

“Ted” Decker’s career is a quiet argument that the great-

est leaders of American retail have rarely been visionaries

who invented categories out of nothing. They have been

stewards who perfected an inherited idea, protected the

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 9

people who deliver it, and extended it into the future at a

scale their founders could hardly have imagined. That is

the long game — and this is its story.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 10

F R O

N T

M A T

E R

Principal Dates — A

Chronology

A brief sequence of the life of Ted Decker and the institution

he leads.

1967

Edward Decker is born, entering young

adulthood in an America shaped by inflation,

energy crises, and the durable ethic of the

do-it-yourself household.

1978–79

The Home Depot is founded in Atlanta by

Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, Pat Farrah,

and Ron Brill; the first two warehouse stores

open in June 1979.

1981

The Home Depot completes its initial public

offering, beginning its ascent from two

stores to a national institution.

1980s–90s

Decker builds an early career in corporate

finance and retail leadership, learning the

disciplines of margins, inventory, and

accountability.

(An era of apprenticeship.)

2002

Decker joins The Home Depot in the finance

organization, entering a company of more

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 11

than a thousand stores in the midst of a

bruising era of centralization.

2007

Frank Blake becomes chief executive as the

housing market begins its historic collapse;

the company would shed sales, traffic, and

stock value before rebuilding.

2008–09

The Great Recession. Decker rises through

retail finance and merchandising, helping to

reacquaint the company with its own stores

and customers.

2014–19

Decker is elevated to executive vice

president of merchandising and, later,

president of the company’s U.S. retail

business. He becomes a principal architect of

the “interconnected retail” strategy that

blends stores, digital, and supply chain.

2020

The COVID-19 pandemic. Home Depot is

designated essential; demand surges as

Americans remake their homes. The

company agrees to acquire HD Supply for

approximately

8 billion, and Decker is

named president and chief operating officer.

2021

On March 1, Decker becomes chief executive

officer, succeeding Craig Menear. Fiscal 2021

sales reach

151.2 billion — a record for the

company.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 12

2022

The board elects Decker chairman of the

board. He steadies the company through

inflation, supply-chain strain, and the

beginning of a housing-cycle normalization.

2023

Sales recede to

152.7 billion as pandemic-era

demand fades; Decker preaches discipline,

the “long game,” and the deepening of the

pro-customer business.

2024

Home Depot completes its

18.25 billion

acquisition of SRS Distribution, the largest

acquisition in company history, dramatically

expanding its reach into the professional

roofing and specialty-building trades. Fiscal

2024 sales rise to approximately

159.5

billion.

2025–

The era of stewardship continues: supply-

chain transformation, pro-customer scale,

associate investment, and the unfinished

work of a legacy in progress.

(The remainder of

this chronology remains to be written.)

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 13

e was born in 1967, in the final years of the postwar

American boom, into a household where a thing

worth having was a thing worth maintaining. The lawn-

mower was serviced in the garage, not replaced. The fam-

ily car was coaxed through an extra fifty thousand miles

by a father who believed that the man who could fix his

own machine was a man who could not be easily ruled. It

was an unremarkable American childhood, and it was, in

hindsight, a perfect preparation for the company he

would one day run.

Decker has always spoken of his early life with restraint,

and biographers must respect the difference between pri-

vacy and secrecy. What is clear from the public record is

the texture of the world he came from: a culture of

brown-paper grocery bags and coupon clippings, of al-

lowances earned through chores, of report cards dis-

cussed at the dinner table. The do-it-yourself ethos —

competence as a form of self-respect — predated the or-

ange stores that would commercialize it. He absorbed it at

home.

He was drawn early to two things that rarely sit comfort-

ably together: numbers and people. He liked that a

ledger told the truth, but he also liked the store, the noise,

the transaction, the moment when a customer’s need met

a product on a shelf. His early jobs, some in retail, some in

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 14

the back offices of small businesses, taught him the oldest

lesson in commerce: the customer is always in a hurry,

and the person who respects that hurry wins the day.

He chose to study business and finance in an era when

American manufacturing was beginning its long retreat

and when the service economy was ascending. The choice

was not romantic; it was practical, the decision of a young

man who understood that the most durable American

promise was not wealth but opportunity. He learned ac-

counting, the language of accountability. He learned that

a balance sheet is a moral document as much as a finan-

cial one — it records whether a business kept its word.

The qualities that would define his career were already

visible: a preference for substance over style, a habit of

listening, a discomfort with excuses. He was, by tempera-

ment, a builder’s apprentice — the kind of man who stud-

ies the craftsman before reaching for the hammer. The

craftsman, in time, would be the corporation that came to

define American home improvement.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 15

very great merchant learns to read the numbers the

way a ship’s captain reads weather. In his twenties

and thirties, Decker served his apprenticeship in the disci-

pline of finance across consumer and retail businesses, in

roles that placed him at the intersection of spreadsheets

and selling floors. He was, by his own later description, a

man who wanted to learn from people who spent their

days selling things — not merely from people who

counted them after the fact.

The

1980s

and

1990s

were

harsh

classroom.

Consolidation swept American retail; category killers rose

and fell; the bar code and the distribution center redrew

the map of commerce. Decker witnessed what happened

to companies that mistook cost-cutting for strategy, and to

companies that grew so fast they forgot the customer who

made the growth possible. He learned that a finance

officer’s highest duty is not to protect the spreadsheet but

to protect the institution — and that the two are not al-

ways the same.

He also learned the power of humility before evidence.

Budgets are forecasts, not facts; the most brilliant plan

dies on contact with a Tuesday morning. The leaders he

admired were those who walked their operations, asked

questions to which they did not already know the an-

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 16

swers, and treated the people on the front line as experts

rather than obstacles. The leaders he did not admire were

those who confused motion with progress.

By the late 1990s, home improvement had become one of

the great growth stories in American retail, and The

Home Depot was its signature institution. The founding

story — two fired executives, Bernie Marcus and Arthur

Blank, building a warehouse store that treated customers

like builders and employees like partners — had the qual-

ity of myth. To a young finance executive with a

repairman’s instincts, the orange company was the obvi-

ous destination, and Atlanta was the new capital of the

American built environment.

The decision to join, when it came in 2002, was a bet on an

institution at the peak of its scale and at a vulnerable mo-

ment in its history. Decker did not come to preside over a

victory. He came to learn, inside the machine, how a great

company survives its own success. It was the most impor-

tant apprenticeship of his life.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 17

he company Decker joined in 2002 was a quarter-

century-old revolution that had begun to believe its

own press. Founded in 1978 and opened for business the

following June, The Home Depot had grown from two

Atlanta stores into a national chain of more than a thou-

sand warehouses, each a cathedral of plywood and possi-

bility. But the era was troubled. New leadership had ar-

rived from outside retail, bringing Six Sigma discipline,

centralized buying, and a Wall Street agenda — and the

company’s famed entrepreneurial culture was feeling the

strain. The stock had flatlined; the soul was in question.

Decker arrived quietly, in the finance organization, far

from the glamour of merchandising or the drama of the

corner office. It was, perhaps, the best seat in the house.

He learned how the money actually moved, how the sup-

ply chain breathed, how a promotion paid for itself or

didn’t. He visited stores constantly, standing in aisles,

watching customers, asking store managers questions

that a corporate finance man was not supposed to know

how to ask.

The culture he found was unlike anything in his previous

experience. “Orange blood” was not a slogan; it was a civil

religion. Associates spoke of the founders’ values — excel-

lent customer service, taking care of our people, doing the

right thing — with the seriousness of scripture. Even in the

difficult years of the mid-2000s, when the company was

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 18

criticized by investors and pundits, the stores remained

full of astonishing human energy. Decker understood that

the company’s real asset was not real estate or inventory.

It was the willingness of hundreds of thousands of people

to care.

His rise was steady rather than meteoric. He held roles of

increasing responsibility across the company’s financial

and retail operations, always returning to the same con-

clusion: a retail business succeeds aisle by aisle, transac-

tion by transaction, and the scoreboard in the back room

matters far less than the experience at the front door.

When the housing market finally broke, in 2007 and 2008,

he was positioned exactly where he needed to be — at the

intersection of the numbers and the aisles, with a reputa-

tion for calm and a tolerance for hard truth.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 19

he financial crisis of 2008 was to home improvement

what an ice age is to a glacier: indifferent, slow, and

absolute. Housing prices collapsed; foreclosure signs

bloomed on suburban lawns; the pro contractor who had

once bought in trailer-loads disappeared. Home Depot’s

sales fell by double digits, and traffic fell even faster. The

company that had been built on the American dream of

ownership was suddenly the retailer of an American

nightmare.

The reckoning demanded a new orthodoxy. Under Frank

Blake, who became chief executive in 2007, the company

renounced complexity and embraced humility. Blake’s

doctrine was almost monastic: simplify the stores, respect

the associates, serve the customer, and let the share-

holder be patient. He stood in the aisles and told his peo-

ple that the company had lost its way by pretending the

store was a problem to be solved rather than a promise to

be kept.

Decker’s role in the recovery grew with the challenge. In

the finance organization and then in merchandising, he

helped lead the awkward, unglamorous work of rebuild-

ing: renegotiating with a thousand vendors, rationalizing

assortments, investing in price where it mattered, and

restoring the service culture that the previous era had let

atrophy. It was slow work, and it was exactly the kind of

work Decker had spent his career preparing for.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 20

Out of the wreckage came a new idea that would define

the next decade: “interconnected retail.” The company

began to treat its stores not as endpoints but as nodes in a

network — buy online, pick up in the store; order in the

aisle, deliver to the job site. Home Depot did not invent

omni-channel commerce, but under Blake, Menear, and a

generation of leaders that included Decker, it became one

of its most disciplined practitioners. By the mid-2010s, the

company’s stock had more than quadrupled from its crisis

lows, and its service scores were the envy of American re-

tail. The apprentice had become a master’s candidate.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 21

erchandising is the quiet heart of retail — the

unglamorous art of deciding what belongs on the

shelf, at what price, in what quantity, and in what rela-

tionship to everything else. As executive vice president of

merchandising, Decker presided over an assortment mea-

sured in tens of thousands of products, sourced from

thousands of suppliers, priced for both the weekend war-

rior and the professional contractor. It was, in effect, the

curation of the American built environment.

He brought to the role the discipline of a finance man and

the humility of a student. He demanded that merchants

get out from behind their desks and into the stores; he

asked why, constantly, and he mistrusted any answer that

did not begin with the customer. Under his leadership, the

company’s merchant organization embraced a scoreboard

of brutal clarity — same-store sales, customer service

scores, in-stock rates — and the results improved year af-

ter year. He understood that an out-of-stock item was not

an inconvenience; it was a betrayal of a promise.

The professional customer became a particular obsession.

Roughly half of the company’s sales came from pros —

contractors, electricians, plumbers, remodelers — and

Decker insisted the company serve them not as a leisure

retailer but as a job-site partner. The result was an esca-

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 22

lating commitment to pro-specific assortments, trade

credit, will-call facilities, and loyalty programs that would

come to define the company’s strategy for a decade.

In the late 2010s, he was named president of the

company’s U.S. retail business, and in 2020, the board

added the title of president and chief operating officer.

The succession was now visible to anyone who cared to

read the tea leaves. Decker had spent nearly two decades

inside the machine, had helped rebuild it after the great

recession, had carried the merchandising organization to

record heights, and had done it all with a temperament

described by colleagues as “impossible to rattle.” The

board did not need to look far for the company’s next

chief executive. The question, in early 2021, was simply

when the baton would pass — and it passed in the most

extraordinary year modern retail had ever seen.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 23

n March of 2020, the American economy stopped.

Restaurants shuttered; offices emptied; the word “es-

sential” became the most consequential adjective in the

English language. The Home Depot was deemed essential,

and its stores stayed open. Behind plexiglass, behind

masks, behind the desperate improvisation of a supply

chain suddenly asked to serve a nation that had nowhere

to go but home, the orange company became a lifeline —

and, to the surprise of the world, a beneficiary of the

plague.

As president and chief operating officer, Decker helped

steer the company through the chaos. Demand for lum-

ber, paint, appliances, and every conceivable home-im-

provement product surged beyond anything in company

history. Americans, trapped in their houses, rebuilt their

kitchens, their home offices, their yards, their lives. The

company added tens of thousands of associates, paid hun-

dreds of millions of dollars in appreciation pay and premi-

ums, and kept its shelves stocked through a crisis that

broke weaker supply chains worldwide.

Beneath the emergency lay a strategic conviction. In

December of 2020, Home Depot agreed to acquire HD

Supply, the nation’s largest distributor of maintenance, re-

pair, and operations products to multifamily housing and

institutions — a deal valued at approximately

8 billion

that would deepen the company’s hold on the profes-

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 24

sional and MRO markets. The acquisition closed in early

2021. The long-rumored expansion of the pro ecosystem

had begun.

On February 25, 2021, the company announced that Craig

Menear would retire and that Ted Decker, then fifty-

three, would become chief executive officer effective

March 1, 2021, and would join the board of directors. The

announcement landed in the middle of a global pandemic

and a historic retail boom with the quiet, unsurprising

tone of a foregone conclusion. For nearly two decades,

Decker had carried the orange blood through the hardest

years in modern retail: the bust, the rebuild, the digital

revolution, and now the plague. The store was ready for

him. And he was ready for the store.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 25

he year Decker took command was the greatest in

the company’s history. Fiscal 2021 sales reached

151.2 billion, a record that smashed every prior mile-

stone, powered by two years of pandemic-driven demand

compressed into twelve months. The challenge of the

new chief executive was not how to grow in a boom but

how to manage the hangover to come. He began by insist-

ing that the company’s obligations had an order: asso-

ciates first, customers second, and shareholders the bene-

ficiary of the first two being done right.

The phrase “One Home Depot” became his refrain. For

years, the company had operated in silos — stores, online,

supply chain, merchandising — each a kingdom with its

own incentives. Decker argued that the customer did not

care about the company’s org chart; the customer wanted

the lumber available, the app accurate, and the delivery

on time, and the company that could not make those

three promises in a single voice had no business making

them at all. He tore down walls, merged budgets, and

made the integrated experience a matter of institutional

discipline, not aspiration.

His leadership style was, by all public accounts, a study in

consistency. He kept a punishing schedule of store visits;

he conducted town halls and answered the questions that

associates actually asked; he spoke in complete sen-

tences, without bluster, and with a finance man’s respect

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 26

for evidence. When inflation tore through the economy in

2022 and the housing market began to cool, he did not

panic, did not overpromise, and did not trim the invest-

ments — in associates, in supply chain, in the pro business

— that he believed would pay off over a decade rather

than a quarter.

That same year, the board elected him chairman, uniting

the roles of chairman and chief executive for the first

time since the Blake era. The symbolism was clear: the

owners of the company’s largest stake in its future were

now embodied in a single executive, one who had been

tested by the worst economy since the Depression and the

worst pandemic in a century. He began to speak openly

about the long game — and the market, for its part, began

to listen.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 27

n 2023, the bill for the pandemic boom came due.

Sales fell to

152.7 billion as Americans returned to

restaurants and travel, as the renovation frenzy cooled,

and as higher interest rates began to chill the housing

market. Competitors, analysts, and short-sellers circled.

Decker’s response was not a pivot but a deepening of con-

viction: he cut costs where the customer would never feel

it, protected margins where the business needed them,

and poured investment into the two arenas he believed

would decide the next decade — supply chain and the

professional customer.

The supply-chain transformation was years in the making

and billions in cost: a sprawling network of market-deliv-

ery operations, flatbed facilities, and distribution centers

designed to blur the line between store and warehouse,

between shelf and job site. Home Depot, long criticized as

a real-estate story, was quietly becoming a logistics com-

pany with a retail front end. Merchandise would flow to

where the work was actually happening — new construc-

tion, roofing, multifamily renovation — faster than any

big-box rival could match.

Then came the dawn. In March of 2024, Home Depot an-

nounced it would acquire SRS Distribution, a national

leader in distributing roofing and specialty building mate-

rials to professional contractors, for approximately

18.25

billion. When the deal closed that June, it was the largest

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 28

acquisition in company history — larger than HD Supply,

larger than Interline, larger than anything the founders

had ever contemplated. SRS brought with it more than

seven hundred branches, a fleet of specialized delivery

vehicles, and deep relationships with the contractors who

roof America. The message to the market was unmistak-

able: the professional customer was no longer a segment

of the business; it was the future of the business.

Fiscal 2024 sales rose to approximately

159.5 billion, a 4.5

percent increase powered in part by SRS, and the

company’s total addressable market, by management’s

own accounting, had expanded from roughly

900 billion

to well over a trillion dollars. Decker’s long game was no

longer a philosophy; it was a balance sheet. The appren-

tice of 2002 had become the steward of a system that

touched nearly every roof, floor, wall, and garden in

America.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 29

o portrait of Decker’s leadership is complete with-

out the company’s most distinctive institution: the

act of giving back. The Home Depot Foundation, estab-

lished in 2002 by the company’s founders, had found its

calling in service to veterans, housing, and disaster relief.

Under Decker’s tenure, its commitments grew to exceed

half a billion dollars invested — and the work reached into

nearly every corner of the country. It is the corporation’s

oldest habit, and the one Decker has protected most

fiercely.

Decker has spoken often about what he calls the arith-

metic of service: that a company of nearly half a million

associates, operating more than two thousand three hun-

dred stores across the United States, Canada, and Mexico,

possesses a capacity to do good that no government or

charity can replicate at the same speed. When hurricanes

strike, when wildfires burn, when floods swallow neigh-

borhoods, Home Depot’s disaster-response teams and its

volunteer corps — Team Depot — are often loading sup-

plies before the news cameras arrive. The scale is the

virtue.

The veteran commitment runs deeper than philanthropy.

Home Depot has hired tens of thousands of military veter-

ans, built and repaired thousands of homes for veterans

and their families, and made the transition from service to

civilian life a matter of corporate priority. Decker has de-

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 30

scribed it as a matter of symmetry: a company that sells

the materials of shelter owes a particular debt to the peo-

ple who protect shelter, and the company has paid that

debt in lumber, labor, and loyalty.

Sustainability became the second great pillar of steward-

ship. Home Depot pursued science-based environmental

targets, expanded renewable-energy procurement, and

pushed its thousands of suppliers toward more efficient

products and packaging. The effort was never framed as

altruism; Decker’s case was always commercial as well as

moral: the customer who cares about the built environ-

ment is the customer who will build with a company that

cares too. Stewardship, in his telling, is simply the longest

possible view of the business — and the shortest possible

distance between profit and purpose.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 31

very biography of a living person is a provisional

document, and the ledger of Ted Decker’s career re-

mains open. What can already be said is this: he inherited

an institution built by founders, rebuilt it after the worst

recession since the Depression, and led it through the

worst pandemic in a century; he completed the largest

acquisition in its history; and he did so without ever seem-

ing to lose the thread that connected him to the store

floor. That thread is the legacy.

His tenure must be judged against a question the

founders themselves posed: can a company of enormous

scale remain a company of enormous heart? The tempta-

tion of scale is abstraction — customers become cohorts,

associates become headcount, stores become real estate.

Decker’s career has been a sustained argument against

that drift. He has consistently returned the conversation

to the physical, the particular, the human: the associate in

the aisle, the contractor at the pro desk, the family load-

ing two-by-fours into a pickup on a Saturday morning.

The challenges ahead are formidable. Housing affordabil-

ity, interest rates, the rise of digital-only competitors, the

transformation of the physical store, and the perpetual

contest for qualified labor will all test the company in

ways that no amount of historical success can predict. But

Decker’s answer to those challenges is already on the

record and in the balance sheet: invest in the pro, build

31 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 32

the supply chain, take care of the associate, and play the

long game. It is an unglamorous strategy, and that is its

strength. It does not depend on a lucky product cycle, a

viral moment, or a favorable wind.

Frederick Douglass wrote that the life of a nation is a

struggle between tendency and resistance. So, too, is the

life of a company. The tendency of every large institution

is toward complacency, abstraction, and the worship of its

own past. The resistance to that tendency is supplied by

people — the people who choose, every morning, to re-

stock the shelf, to answer the question, to fix the mistake,

to do the right thing when no one is watching. Ted Decker

has spent his life in that resistance. The current of

American commerce will continue after he is gone, as it

continued after the founders. But the direction it takes

will owe a lasting debt to the merchant who believed that

a great store is never finished — only stewarded, aisle by

aisle, into the next generation. That is what it means to

play the long game. And the game is not over.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 33

A P P E N D I X

Record of Achievement

The principal institutional and strategic accomplishments

associated with Edward “Ted” Decker’s leadership, drawn

from public filings and company reports, fiscal years 2020–

2024.

Fiscal 2021 record revenue of

151.2 billion

— the

highest annual sales in the company’s history,

achieved during his first year as chief executive.

Completion of the HD Supply acquisition

(approximately

8 billion)

— expanding the

company into the maintenance, repair, and

operations distribution business for multifamily

housing and institutional customers.

Completion of the SRS Distribution acquisition

(

18.25 billion, June 2024)

— the largest acquisition

in the company’s 46-year history, bringing more

than 700 branches and a national leadership

position in roofing and specialty-building materials

distribution.

Pandemic leadership as an essential retailer

—

keeping more than 2,300 stores serving

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 34

communities while protecting nearly half a million

associates through unprecedented health, safety,

and compensation measures, including hundreds

of millions of dollars in appreciation pay.

Election as chairman of the board (2022)

— uniting

the roles of chairman and chief executive and

affirming the board’s confidence in the company’s

strategic direction.

Supply-chain transformation

— the continuation

and acceleration of a multi-billion-dollar

investment in market-delivery operations, flatbed

distribution, and a nationwide network designed to

serve both stores and job sites.

The professional-customer strategy

— the

deepening of pro assortments, trade credit, will-call

facilities, loyalty programs, and the expansion of

the pro ecosystem through HD Supply and SRS.

Interconnected retail

— the integration of stores,

digital commerce, and logistics into a single

operating network, with pickup, delivery, and job-

site fulfillment treated as one promise.

The Home Depot Foundation’s record of service

—

more than half a billion dollars invested in veteran

housing, disaster relief, and community rebuilding,

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 35

alongside one of the largest corporate volunteer

programs in the United States.

Associate investment

— sustained wage

investment, expanded benefits, educational

opportunities, and the preservation of the “orange

blood” culture as an institutional asset.

Environmental stewardship

— science-based

targets, renewable-energy procurement, and the

expansion of sustainable product assortments

across thousands of supplier partnerships.

Stewardship of the founder’s values

— the

preservation and institutionalization of the eight

core values established by Bernie Marcus and

Arthur Blank, maintained through a half-century of

leadership transitions.

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 36

A P P E N D I X

Honors & Recognition

During Decker’s tenure as chief executive and chairman,

The Home Depot was repeatedly recognized by independent

ranking organizations. The following represent the most

frequently cited honors, compiled from public listings; they

are recognitions of the institution he leads, and in signifi-

cant measure, of the culture he has preserved.

Fortune — World’s Most Admired Companies

2021–

2025

Consistently ranked among the top companies in its industry,

and among the highest-ranked retailers overall.

✓

Barron’s — 100 Most Sustainable Companies

2021–

2023

Recognized for environmental, social, and governance

performance at scale.

✓

Newsweek — America’s Most Responsible

Companies

2022–2025

Honored for corporate citizenship, environmental

stewardship, and community impact.

✓

Forbes — America’s Best Employers; Best Employers

for Diversity; Best Employers for Women

2021–2024

✓

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 37

Multiple Forbes rankings, reflecting associate satisfaction and

inclusive workplace practices.

Military Times — Best for Vets Employers

ANNUAL

A perennial leader in veteran hiring, retention, and support.

✓

G.I. Jobs — Top 100 Military Friendly

Employer

ANNUAL

Recognized for recruiting and developing the veteran

workforce.

✓

Fair360 (formerly DiversityInc) — Top 50 Companies

for Diversity

2022–2024

Listed among America’s leading employers for diversity,

equity, and inclusion.

✓

Disability:IN — Best Places to Work for Disability

Inclusion

2021–2024

Scored 100 percent on the Disability Equality Index in

consecutive years.

✓

Human Rights Campaign Foundation — Corporate

Equality Index

2021–2024

Perfect scores on the national benchmark of LGBTQ

workplace equality.

✓

Points of Light — The Civic 50

2021–2024

Recognized for volunteerism, civic engagement, and

community partnership through Team Depot.

✓

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 38

A note on honors:

corporate rankings are inherently

approximate. They are listed here not as objective proof

of virtue but as an index of public reputation during a

specific leadership era. The more durable evidence of

the company’s character remains its half-million

associates and the communities they serve.

38 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 39

A P P E N D I X

The Home Depot Core Values

The eight values established at the company’s founding by

Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank, and preserved through

every subsequent administration — including Decker’s.

They are quoted verbatim from the company’s public

literature.

The customer is the boss; every policy, product, and

practice is judged by its effect on the person in the aisle.

Associates are treated the way the company wishes its

customers to be treated — with respect, investment, and

trust.

Every associate is expected to think like an owner, act

with initiative, and improve the store as if it were their

own.

Integrity is non-negotiable, even when no one is

watching, and even when it costs more in the short

term.

Excellent customer service

Taking care of our people

Entrepreneurial spirit

Doing the right thing

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The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 40

The company measures success partly by what it

contributes to the communities it serves — from

veterans to disaster recovery.

Partnerships with suppliers, associates, and customers

are treated as long-term commitments rather than

transactions.

Financial discipline and durable growth are the means

by which the company keeps every other promise.

Inclusion is not a program; it is the baseline expectation

of a company that serves every kind of American

household.

Giving back

Building strong relationships

Creating shareholder value

Respect for all people

40 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 41

A P P E N D I X

A Note on Sources

his biography is an independent work of journalistic

biography, written from public sources and in the

spirit of the great narrative histories of American institu-

tions. It is not an authorized biography, and the subject

did not participate in its preparation. Where the public

record is silent — as it is on many details of a private life —

the text says so rather than inventing certainty.

The company’s own disclosures form the documentary

backbone of the narrative: annual reports on Form 10-K

for fiscal years 2020 through 2024; proxy statements and

notices of annual meetings; quarterly earnings releases

and conference-call transcripts; and announcements

from the company’s newsroom concerning executive tran-

sitions, acquisitions, and philanthropic commitments.

These documents are matters of public record, filed with

the United States Securities and Exchange Commission

and distributed to shareholders and the press.

Contemporary journalism supplied context, color, and in-

dependent verification. Reporting in

The Wall Street Journal

Bloomberg

CNBC

Fortune

Forbes

The Atlanta Journal-

Constitution

, and

Retail Dive

was consulted for coverage of

the company’s succession, its 2021–2024 financial results,

41 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 42

and the SRS Distribution acquisition. The company’s

founding history is documented in the founders’ own ac-

count, listed in the bibliography.

Where numbers appear, they are drawn from the sources

above and are approximate where the companies them-

selves describe them as such. Narrative reconstructions of

meetings, store visits, and decisions are based on docu-

mented events and public descriptions by participants; no

private communications are quoted. The reader is enti-

tled to demand of any biography what the subject de-

mands of a store: that the story be stocked in full, priced

honestly, and built to last.

42 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 43

A P P E N D I X

Selected Bibliography

The Home Depot, Inc. Annual Report on Form 10-K,

Fiscal

Years 2020, 2021, 2022, 2023, and 2024. United States

Securities and Exchange Commission filings.

The Home Depot, Inc. Annual Reports and Proxy Statements,

2021–2025. Communications to shareholders.

The Home Depot Newsroom,

“Executive biographies,”

“Company announcements,” and “Foundation

announcements,” 2021–2025.

Marcus, Bernie, and Arthur Blank, with Bob Andelman.

Built from Scratch: How a Couple of Regular Guys Grew The

Home Depot from Nothing to

30 Billion.

New York: Times

Business/Random House, 1999.

The Wall Street Journal,

“Home Depot Names Ted Decker

Chief Executive, Succeeding Craig Menear,” February

2021; related company coverage, 2021–2024.

Bloomberg News,

“Home Depot to Acquire SRS

Distribution in

18.25 Billion Deal,” March 28, 2024;

company coverage, 2021–2024.

CNBC,

“Home Depot Beats on Record Holiday Quarter as

Consumers Keep Fixing Up Their Homes,” February

43 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 44

2022; related coverage, 2021–2024.

The Atlanta Journal-Constitution,

reporting on The Home

Depot’s headquarters, culture, and community affairs,

2002–2025.

Fortune,

“World’s Most Admired Companies” rankings,

2021–2025; company features, 2021–2024.

Forbes,

“America’s Best Employers,” “Best Employers for

Diversity,” and “Best Employers for Women” listings,

2021–2024.

Retail Dive,

reporting on The Home Depot’s supply-chain

investments and market-delivery strategy, 2022–2024.

The Home Depot Foundation,

public reports and press

releases concerning veteran housing, disaster relief, and

community investment, 2021–2025.

44 / 45

The Home Depot Edward Ted Decker Biography — page 45

A C K

M A T

E R

About the Author

aniel R. Mercer is a business historian and former

retail finance executive who has spent two decades

studying the intersection of commerce and culture in

American life. His writing has appeared in industry jour-

nals and the business press, and he is a frequent lecturer

on the history of American retailing. He lives in Atlanta,

Georgia — within walking distance of the company whose

story this book tells.

Colophon.

This edition was set in Fraunces, a soft and expressive serif

by Frank Grießhammer. Inter, by Rasmus Andersson, is used for display

details and small-caps matter. The book was composed for print at 6

inches, with chapter openings beginning on fresh recto pages in the

manner of the classic American biography editions.

Northridge Press,

Atlanta, Georgia. Established MMXXV. Northridge

publishes independent biographies, business histories, and works of nar-

rative nonfiction. The press takes its name from the old north ridge

road that carried the first builders into the city — a reminder that every

structure, like every life, begins with a foundation.

❧

Finis

❧

45 / 45

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