Home Depot Wouldn't Exist If Sanders Were President: Co-Founder

ATLANTA -- Bernie Marcus, whose company he co-founded, The Home Depot, opened its first store 40 years ago this week, said in a recent Fox News interview that the world's largest home retailer could never have gone into business if Bernie Sanders had been president. Marcus, who started the company with Arthur Blank in 1978, made the remarks during a recent interview with Neil Cavuto. "Home Depot is the poster child for capitalism," Marcus said. "[Sanders] is the enemy of every entrepreneur that's ever going to be born in the country and has been born in the past."

Marcus appeared on Cavuto's show along with another Home Depot founder, Ken Langone, who added, "If people in America today want to know what the future holds for them following Bernie Sanders, go to Cuba, Venezuela, Russia, Eastern Europe. Guess what? It doesn't work."

The first of two Home Depot stores opened in Atlanta on June 22, 1979. The stores were around 60,000 square feet each, cavernous warehouses that dwarfed the competition and stocked 25,000 products, much more than the average hardware store at that time.

Today, The Home Depot is the world’s largest home improvement retailer with nearly 400,000 associates and more than 2,200 stores in the U.S., Canada and Mexico. The typical store today averages 105,000 square feet of indoor retail space, interconnected with an e-commerce business that offers more than one million products for the DIY customer, professional contractors, and the industry’s largest installation business for the Do-It-For-Me customer.

In fiscal 2018, The Home Depot had sales of $108.2 billion and earnings of $11.1 billion. Both Marcus and Blank have since retired from their roles in the company, with Marcus founding The Georgia Aquarium and Blank becoming one of professional sports' higher profile owners, with the NFL's Atlanta Falcons and 2018 MLS Cup champions Atlanta United.

Sanders is one of more than 20 Democrats seeking their party's White House nomination. He consistently trails perceived front-runner Joe Biden in every poll. Sanders wants to abolish public college tuition and provide immediate citizenship status for young people under the DACA program, among other liberal proposals.