Discontinued: Home Depot's Upscale Expo Brand Shuttered

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[Image via the LA Times]

R.I.P, Home Depot Expo. Yesterday, the home renovation chain announced that it was shutting down its upscale incarnation, forthrightly telling the LA Times: "The Expo business has not performed well financially and is not expected to any time soon. Even during the recent housing boom, it was not a strong business." (Try to find some spin in that statement. You can't. It's impossible. Home Depot: Not even trying to pretend the glass is half full.) The 34 Expos, including eight around here, will disappear by April, leaving 7,000 jobless.

A tipster writes in with some context: "What is notable about their one and only store in Los Angeles is that it is located inside the former Bullocks/Macy's Westwood Department Store. The former Bullocks was subdivided into Expo, Ralph's Fresh Fare, Best Buy and Longs Drugs. Longs left the building two years ago. Now there will be two vacancies in the old department store. I didn't even mention the other sites in the area, including South Bay Galleria (Redondo Beach), Huntington Beach, Monrovia and Anaheim--all with large chunks of land..." The only good news is that all the Expos are located in fairly affluent areas, meaning their spaces probably won't stay empty for too long.
· Home Depot to close Expo stores [LAT]