The Home Depot Metaverse could be another household name brewing in the emerging Web3 world. Home Depot has filed for 24 Web3 trademarks covering its name, logo, and marks, according to a tweet from trademark attorney Mike Kondoudis. The trademarks were filed with the United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) on November 17, 2022.
Trademarks were reportedly filed for 17 marks, including Hampton Bay, Husky and Lifeproof, covering NFTs, virtual goods, and online retail stores. This leads us to imagine that home improvement services in virtual or augmented reality environments could be in sight.
With the rise of successful projects like Decentraland and The Sandbox, Web3 applications for retailers like The Home Depot are lucrative. This latest move could see it develop NFTs, virtual avatars, and home improvement items for use in the Metaverse.
Why waste fuel when you can buy them from the Metaverse store? All you need is a virtual headset.
Immersion Overview:
- To strengthen its position among professional customers, The Home Depot on Tuesday introduced a series of virtual workshops to offer business advice to professional contractors.
- The virtual workshops will cover a wide range of topics: using social media best practices for businesses, managing business expenses, and identifying industry trends, according to a company announcement. Home Depot kicked off the series with a workshop taught by an associate professor of finance from Georgia Tech’s Scheller College of Business.
- According to a company press release, the workshops will be held every other month.
Dive Insight:
Home Depot has long been the preferred home improvement destination for professionals, and the retailer’s latest initiative appears to be an effort to cement that position.
In its latest quarter, CEO Ted Decker said sales in its professional segment continued to outpace DIY during the period. The retailer reported that fourth-quarter net sales rose 10.7% year-over-year to $35.7 billion, while composite sales grew 8.1% overall and 7.6% in the United States.
Decker added that professionals have historically come to Home Depot for its convenience for last-minute and unplanned purchases. Still, the retailer is working on getting those customers into the Home Depot ecosystem sooner.
“We’re building capabilities with our Pro ecosystem to accelerate Pro share growth, especially in planned shopping,” Decker said on a call with analysts last month. “We’ve always talked about [how] every Pro is in our building. I mean, we’re a 7-Eleven for pros-convenience, value, excellent products, and brands-but what we’re building now is something completely different and revolutionary to get the Pro planned to buy.”
To help with that
The retailer has introduced several efforts aimed at the professional customer, including offering a new Pro Xtra credit card and adding new features to its Business Account card. While the Pro Xtra card offers volume pricing, paint rewards, and exclusive product offers, the Commercial Account card offers cardholders a 2% prepayment discount for balances paid within 20 days or a 60-day payment term, the company said in a January press release.
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Winning over the pros will also help Home Depot in the long run as overall demand in the home improvement category begins to wane. At the height of the pandemic, the class experienced a spike in demand as more consumers undertook home-related projects to make their new realities, such as working and studying from home, more comfortable. In the early days of the pandemic, many consumers took on these projects themselves to prevent contractors from entering their homes. When consumers became more comfortable hiring contractors again, the demand for professionals increased. So while sales growth from do-it-yourself customers is slowing for Home Depot, sales from its professional customers remain strong.
Home Depot’s experimentation with live programming-which also includes its Homeowner 101 series, DIY workshops, and seasonal workshops-follows other retailers, such as Petco and Anne Klein. These retailers have done the same in recent years via Facebook and other social platforms. Earlier this month, Walmart expanded its partnership with social shopping platform Talkshoplive to host several new live-streaming experiences with celebrities such as Rachael Ray and Drew Barrymore.
