Which home improvement retailer was founded in 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia?

The home improvement retailer founded in 1978 in Atlanta, Georgia, is The Home Depot.

Bernard Marcus, Arthur Blank, Ron Brill, Pat Farrah, and Ken Langone co-founded the company in 1978. Its original idea was to create warehouse-sized home-improvement stores offering a broad selection and helpful service, rather than the narrower hardware-store format common at the time.

The first two Home Depot stores opened in June 1979 in the Atlanta metropolitan area: one in Doraville and another on Memorial Drive in Decatur. The company later expanded beyond Georgia, entering Florida in 1981 and going public on NASDAQ that same year. Its familiar orange branding and large “big-box” stores helped make it a leading American home-improvement chain.

A common mix-up is the location wording: the company is strongly associated with Atlanta, but its formal foundation entry is Marietta, Georgia, in the Atlanta metro area. Lowe’s is a major competitor, while True Value is primarily a retailer-owned cooperative and Menards is a separate regional chain.