Home Depot opens Naples store, highlights jobs and internal career path

Home Depot’s new Naples store is built to do more than sell lumber and paint. Store #6344 at 11880 Tamiami Trail E. opened as a 135,000-square-foot location expected to create 80-plus local jobs, giving the company a fresh hiring footprint in a city where home upkeep and remodeling demand remain strong.

The Naples opening is one of 12 new U.S. stores Home Depot is adding in 2026, a buildout that will total more than 1.6 million square feet across eight states. The company has tied that expansion to rising housing needs and the work of maintaining an older housing stock, a message that lands in Naples, where U.S. Census QuickFacts estimates 55.8% of residents are 65 or older and 82.1% of homes are owner-occupied. In a city of 20,114 people as of July 1, 2025, that mix points to a steady customer base for repairs, upgrades and contractor-driven projects.

For associates, the bigger takeaway is what the store says about advancement. Jan, the store manager, started with Home Depot in 2018 as a part-time Flooring associate before moving through store roles and the Merchandising Execution Team, or MET. That path gives floor associates a concrete example of how product knowledge, merchandising discipline and store-side experience can translate into leadership. Home Depot created MET about 15 years ago as an alternative to third-party vendor service groups, so stores could be kept looking great by associates with stronger ownership.

The Naples format also shows where Home Depot is investing next. The store page highlights expanded flooring and kitchen showrooms, flexible checkout areas, a larger garden center, Buy Online Pick Up in Store storage, buy online deliver from store service, key cutting, large equipment rental, truck rental, propane exchange, tool rental, free Wi-Fi and in-store recycling. For department leads and managers, that is a cue that store performance will depend on speed, accuracy and coordination across service desks, rental, fulfillment and merchandising, not just shelf stocking.

The pro side of the business is getting similar attention. Home Depot launched Blueprint Takeoffs in November 2025 for professional renovators, remodelers and builders, and the company said in March 2026 that it already offered more than a dozen AI-powered capabilities. In Naples, that means the store is being positioned as a jobsite support hub as much as a retail floor, with AI, pro service and store labor all aimed at serving bigger projects faster.