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When Hurricane Sandy slammed into the northeastern part of the United States, the level of damage was clearly devastating. It was the start of a tremendously difficult time for many residents of this highly populous region. When bad things happen, a silver lining often emerges. In this case, that is a positive impact on the home improvement industry.

On Jan. 13, 1975, National Home Center News published its very first issue, which was described on the masthead as “A newspaper for retailers serving homeowners and contractors.”

Competing for attention on page one were a handful of stories of varying degrees of historical value — from the activities of 84 Lumber’s most recent corporate Christmas party (logrolling, tobacco spitting) to a profile of Dart Home Center’s help-yourself warehouse approach in Charlottesville, Va.

There is an old curse: “May you live in interesting times.” Unfortunately for the economy, the last several years have been “interesting times.” Home improvement has weathered this storm better than some areas (notably new-home construction), but the industry has clearly been impacted. Twice a year the Home Improvement Research Institute (HIRI) publishes a detailed size-of-market forecast for home improvement product sales.

This summer, my dad, he one of the “Greatest Generation,” passed away after a full life. He died in the home he built with his own hands for our family in 1958: a three-bedroom cape on the south shore of Long Island, about 3 miles north (as the seagull flies) of the Great South Bay.

As a former store owner, avid consumer and general retail junkie, I really get excited when I walk through a store and find myself thinking “WOW! Look at THIS.” More than once, when really excited, the “Wow!” in my head has extended to my mouth, occasionally to my embarrassment, but more often to either agreement from my fellow shoppers or the appreciation from nearby employees.

In a little less than two months, Gaithersburg, Md.-based TW Perry CEO Michael Cassidy will be called to a podium at the Grand Hyatt in San Antonio, Texas, during the 2011 ProDealer Industry Summit, an event hosted jointly by the National Lumber & Building Material Dealers Association (NLBMDA) and Home Channel News.


While attending a meeting with the Home Improvement Research Institute, a Home Channel News editor made a side trip to another important South Florida institution that could help us all better understand our industry.


This institution is called The Salvador Dalí Museum in St. Petersburg. (Note to accounting: The $10 admission ticket and $3 parking are now officially “business related.”) And it does so by preparing us for the surreal in our world.


Not to pick on Fortune Magazine — after all, I want to be a billionaire someday, too — but who couldn’t come up with a list of 500 publicly traded companies? Not to disparage our competitor’s fine work, but their Fortune 500 issue almost writes itself. All they really need is Google and a spreadsheet.


Lowe’s chairman emeritus Robert Strickland was inducted into the Home Channel Hall of Fame four years ago. As he approached the podium, he seemed as relaxed as you or I might be approaching the office microwave at lunchtime.


“I would like tonight to talk about A, B, C,” he began. And with those three first initials, he launched into a discourse that summed up the lessons learned from a career of successful retailing — or as close a summation as three words can get to a 41-year career.


As a result of too much good material and not enough space, here is a collection of semi-random notes from the International Builders’ Show in Orlando, Fla.  


• Question: Does anybody really pay $99 a day for Internet connection — the asking price at the convention center? 


• I told my cab driver what I was doing in Orlando. 


“That’s funny,” he said. 


“Why?”


If your company’s overarching online strategy sounds like this: “Integrate real-time platforms,” then your company is in trouble for two reasons. 1) The three words above were generated randomly by the Dack.com Web Economy Bulls--t Generator; and 2) Few people know what any of those words mean individually, let alone in conjunction with one another.


You gotta have a plan, in English.