A Look at Home Depot Pro Trades

 If you're unfamiliar with it, Home Depot Pro Trades is an online direct supplies and materials business,  owned and operated by Home Depot.

It used to be "ebarnett".  They gave a bit of a convoluted background but it's still online supplies and materials for certain trades and businesses.

I got connected to it via the Association of Certified Handyman Professionals that I'm a member of.  Being a professional handyman doing different projects for rental properties,  I find myself needing a wide range of products and I utterly despise in store shopping.  If I can ever avoid going into a store myself, I will.

My own experience with Home Depot Pro Trades online has been hit and miss.  Some of the products and materials I use are to be found there.  Some of those are actually very well priced.  Some are competitive with brick and mortar stores.  Some, the brick and mortar beat easily.

Some products I use regularly,  aren't available or have to be "found" and usually not competitively priced.  Even the Home Depot regular app has the items and beats the prices.  I'm not that it's a good look when your "main line" store is more competitive and has better availability than the "specialty" trade arm.

The things I like most about ordering online in general is

1. Not being in a physical store

2. Able to have items delivered where I want them to go and in a reasonable amount of time, free or at a reasonable price. 

3. Keeping track of various and multiple orders and tracking order histories.


All the store apps and websites offer that much pretty well nowadays.  But the Home Depot Pro Trades site provides a dedicated sales rep to work with.  That really does help a lot when trying to find uncommon items or get better pricing on some things.  They know where to look and have the inhouse connections.

In the end, the kind of business that I do, isn't really what they are set up to deal with.  One day I'm installing new smart locks and devices in an airbnb house, another day, I'm putting up a shower door then fixing water damage window trim in a bathroom.  Later on, I'm installing a new lighting fixture and repairing a storm damaged upper deck rail on a long term rental house.

Ceiling fan installs, rental property turnovers, porch column repairs from squirrels chewing through them. Office desk and furniture assemblies and installs, and mounting big screen tv's and computer monitors on walls for home offices. I do a wide variety of projects. Sometimes,  often, I don't have much time to wait to find and get the things needed to do the project.

Local brick and mortar with the help of their smart phone apps along with Amazon are my most common "go-to" places.

I can see the value of the Home Depot Pro Trades website for full blown shops in a particular area like plumbers and electrical shops.  Even apartment complexes with a maintenance crew would probably find this website very good.

But for me and the sporadic,  "who-knows-what's-next" way that I work, especially as just one guy moving from place to place around the metro area, not so much.

I'll be keeping the account, because it has been useful and the sales rep has been VERY helpful and positive to work with when I needed help.

But from my perspective, the best I can give it is a "C" overall. I just don't have the volume of need for the things they carry to get much regular benefit.

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