Home Depot Inc announced its first foray into China's booming market on Wednesday with the purchase of a Chinese chain of 12 home improvement stores that modeled itself on the US giant.
Home Depot is a latecomer to China, where competitors such as Sweden's IKEA, Britain's B&Q and Chinese retailers already have a presence.
Home Depot declined to release the purchase price for Home Way (
"We have expanded in North America and see China as a chance to grow," Home Depot's president for Canadian and Asian operations, Annette Verschuren, told reporters.
The Home Depot acquisition was announced at a ceremony attended by US Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez ahead of US-Chinese trade talks this week in Beijing.
Foreign retailers are looking to China to drive sales as growth in the US and Europe slows and millions of Chinese families buy homes and start to acquire furniture and appliances.
Estimates of the size of China's home-improvement market range from US$15 billion to as much as US$50 billion a year. Verschuren said Home Depot is forecasting annual growth rates of 20 percent.
China's home-decorating boom got moving in the late 1990s when the government began encouraging families to buy apartments in order to get state companies out of the housing business.
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