Thanks. Business, or how to make a profit at what you do has always interested me. I never wanted to struggle from paycheck to paycheck like my parents did. I also found it difficult to work with others as I like to do gather information and then do things my way. I have worked fulltime since I was 15. I knew I worked a lot at a local restaurant but I did not realize how much I worked until I started receiving those yearly social security statements showing I had wages of $3435 in 1966. I couldn't have made more than about 1.25 -1.50 and hour (That comes out to over 40 hours per week)back then as I know I started out at 90 cents and hour in 1965 when I earned $857 for the year. (back then a full time week was 48 hours per week) I came from a poor background and only attended some college when I was 29 (waited tables to support my family during that time along with some GI bill benefits), just before I got in the hardware business after a failure in the restaurant business. (That is another story how my brother and I started our hardware business with just $6,000 between the two of us.)
I guess I learned alot about business from my failures and I took an interest in other's failures and sucesses as to learn from them as well. One example is that Home Depot opened there first store in Atlanta the same month we opened our hardware store in 1979. I think they went public in 1981. By 1985 I was studying their financails trying to figure out how they could sell stuff so cheap. Especially after I started comparing their financials with some of their publc competitors.
I found some interesting things and some aggressive accounting at Home Depot. I even called the Prudential Analyst following Home Depot to share my findings - even accusing HD of what I would call "cheating". That earned me a call from Home Depot's controller who told me I was wrong but could not tell me how I was wrong. At that time I had built up a relationship through my business with some vendors and what HD was telling me about their accounts payable terms was not the same as what the vendors were telling me. I found it odd that HD had half as much payables on their books relative to revenues as did LOWES and several other public companies yet the vendors were telling me it was taking HD twice as long to pay. Over time those descrepancies leveled out, and HD could no longer get away with it. Unfortunately many competitors went out of business during those earlier years.
(BTW, HD's concept was flawed in the early goings. They were selling merchandise too cheap. The only way they survived was by going public fairly quickly and using puble money, and opening new stores quickly to increase cash flow. They also delayed payment to vendors. You go from paying ever 30 days to every 60 and receiving cash for what you sell you can greatly increase cash flow. Still not making much money they then got many vendors to 'finance' their opening order for their new stores. About $3 mil per store if I recall. These goods technically weren't theirs but they accounted for them as they were (increasing inventory (assets)) with no matching payable to offset as the they were not required to pay for that merchandise as long as they kept buying refills. If HD opened 100 stores they got about $300 mil in inventory - free more or less. That fell to the bottom line. (Interesting that the vendors were counting this inventory as theirs as well.) If you look at HD over the last few years where store opening have slowed you will see how earnings have slowed. But that is a whole another story and See Shasta heard me much too much complain about this in the late 90's on the AOL HD board. lol!)
In answer to your question I received most my accounting background studying HD's and their competitors financials for many years.
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