The Home Depot is today the largest home improvement retailer in the United States, but it started with four names most shoppers have never heard: Bernie Marcus, Arthur Blank, Ron Brill and Pat Farrah, who founded the company in 1978.
The bet the four of them made was not just on a product category but on a format. In 1979 they opened the first two Home Depot stores in Atlanta as warehouse-format outlets, selling building materials, tools, appliances and home decor to individual homeowners and professional contractors alike under one very large roof. That warehouse format, rather than any single product, is what grew into the big-box store network the company runs today.