Home Depot has finally found a use for your pointy-haired boss — they made him a sales person. The leading home improvement chain has boosted sales by shifting some employees from the back-office to the sales floor. The red staplers will be lonely, but the customers are buying more items per trip.

Improvements to the company’s distribution network have also helped, according to Bloomberg:

Chief Executive Officer Frank Blake has lured consumers pinched by sagging home prices by shifting back-office employees to the sales floor and improving distribution from warehouses to stores. The number of transactions increased by 1.2 percent to 325.3 million while shoppers’ average spending rose 3 percent to $53.03 per ticket.

“They are operating very efficiently and strongly in a terrible housing market and a prolonged economic downturn,” John Tomlinson, an analyst at ITG Investment Research, said today by telephone from New York. The firm doesn’t rate stocks. “They continue to gain market share.”

With sales up 4.2% in branches open at least a year, the company’s sales growth has outpaced rival Lowe’s for the past 10 quarters. Lowe’s same-store sales were up just 0.7% this quarter.

Home Depot Profit Tops Estimates After Shoppers Spend More [Bloomberg]

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