One of the men who founded Home Depot has died.
Bernard “Bernie” Marcus was 95 years old.
CNN broke the news citing an internal memo, but requests to Home Depot were not answered as of Tuesday morning.
Georgia Gov. Brian Kemp confirmed Marcus’ death on social media, WSB reported.
— Governor Brian P. Kemp (@GovKemp) November 5, 2024
The company released a statement that read, “The Home Depot is deeply saddened by the passing of our beloved founder, Bernard Marcus. To us, he was simply “Bernie.”
Marcus was the company’s CEO until 1997 and the chairman until he retired in 2002.
According to Home Depot, Marcus and Arthur Blank were two DIYers and “envisioned a superstore that would offer a huge variety of merchandise at great prices and with a highly trained staff.” They came up with the idea while sitting in a coffee shop in Los Angeles in 1978.
They teamed up with an investment banker and a merchandise expert to open the first Home Depots in 1979 in Atlanta. The stores were 60,000 square feet and much larger than other hardware stores in the area. The employees could sell the products on the shelves and show people how to use them. The demonstrations morphed into clinics, workshops and one-on-one teaching sessions, the company said.
The company also developed a customer bill of rights promising the “best assortment, quantity and price” along with fully trained workers at all locations.
There are more than 2,300 stores in three countries with the company worth about $400 billion, CNN reported. It also gives back to the communities it serves through The Home Depot Foundation and Team Depot volunteers.
“This is my payback to America. And I’m doing it because I think if God put me on this Earth, this is one of the things I want to do with my life – is to help these kids,” he told WSB.
Marcus had a net worth of about $10.3 billion in 2024, according to Forbes.
Marcus was the son of Russian immigrants who lived in “a fourth-floor walk-up tenement” in New Jersey, Forbes reported.
He was the youngest of our children and earned a degree in merchandising and marketing at Rutgers University, CNN reported.
He worked for several chains before opening Home Depot.
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