Roughly every 43 hours another Home Depot opens in the U.S., Canada or Mexico. As of late last month, the company had 1,666 stores. Next month the Atlanta-based retailer expects to wrap up its fiscal year with record sales of more than $60 billion. But it wasn't so long ago that Home Depot was itself in urgent need of renovation. In 2002 the company's stock price tumbled 53 percent. Many analysts concluded that the home improvement market was overbuilt. Scrappy competitors ― notably, Wilkesboro, North Carolina-based Lowe's Cos. ― were whittling at Home Depots customer base. When Robert Nardelli was brought in from General Electric Co. to run Home Depot in December 2000, the company had posted four consecutive quarters of declining same-store sales. Recruited by the company's three founders ― Arthur Blank, Kenneth Langone and Bernie Marcus ― Nardelli was to be the first outsider to run, the 24-year-old enterprise.
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