Home Depot Inc., the nation’s No. 1 home improvement retailer, has agreed to buy Litemor Distributors, Canada’s largest national commercial lighting distributor, to expand its reach into the Canadian market’s commercial and institutional sectors. The agreement is expected to close within a month.
Litemor is headquartered in Montreal and employs 250 people in both the United States and Canada. According to information on Litemor’s Web site, the 36-year-old company stocks over 100,000 lighting products from 100 vendors at its 13 branches.
Litemor will become a part of Home Depot Supply Canada, a division of Home Depot Inc. Home Depot has about 24,000 employees in Canada, and operates 115 stores in nine Canadian provinces.
“We are very excited about having Litemor join The Home Depot Canada team,” said Annette Verschuren, president of The Home Depot Canada and EXPO Design Center. “We were attracted to Litemor because of its leadership team and the similarity of its supplier base. Acquiring Litemor creates a platform for The Home Depot Supply’s future growth in Canada and establishes a solid national presence in this market.”
The company named Ron Turk as president, The Home Depot Supply Canada, to guide the integration of Litemor into The Home Depot Supply Canada platform. Turk comes to the Canadian Division from The Home Depot Supply in the United States, where he was most recently executive vice president of business development and strategy, reporting to Jim Stoddart, president of that division.
“Litemor’s leadership team will continue to play an integral role in growing the business,” stated Turk. “Our combined team has the knowledge and resources to maximize the growth opportunity in Canada and become the country’s leading supplier to the professional customer.”
Home Depot’s acquisition of Litemor Distributors is another example of its ongoing expansion far past its core focus on sales to home owners. The company has acquired flooring companies and other businesses in recent years as it expands its Home Depot Supply division that caters to home builders, facility maintenance professionals, contractors and landscapers.
Home Depot made its first move into electrical distribution outside its retail home centers when it bought Georgia Lighting Supply Co. Inc., Atlanta, one of the largest specialty retailers and distributors in the country at the time of the acquisition, in 1999.