Tony Cianfrani, general manager of the new Pinecrest Home Depot, 13501 Pinecrest Parkway (S. Dixie Highway), is willing to go the distance.

Tony Cianfrani gets a bird’s eye view of the Pinecrest Home Depot where he is manager.

"It’s a little bit of a drive to get to work," said Cianfrani who lives in Broward County. "But, I really don’t mind the drive. It gives me time to prepare my day in the morning and cool off at night. It really doesn’t bother me at all."

Cianfrani, 34, was 19 years old and fresh out of high school when a friend convinced him to go to work for the new company called Home Depot. It was his first and only real job.

"I started working part time at the Hollywood store pushing shopping carts," the personable Cianfrani recalled. "We call it the lot engineer position, where you keep the parking lot clean and help the customers load."

Cianfrani never left the company and steadily moved up in the ranks to his present position as general manager of the just-opened Pinecrest store, with its $9.5 million inventory and 215-plus employees.

"I’m having a blast here," said Cianfrani. "The company’s got a tremendous reputation and I get to see it from the inside. I had a buddy of mine, who’s now a vice president of the company, who told me all about it and got me excited about it. Half of my high school seemed to start at Home Depot at that point, a bunch of my friends; we all fell in love with the company."

Cianfrani, his wife, Mercy, and their three children, reside in Davie. He said he puts in between nine and 12 hours at the store on a given day, depending on the day’s workload.

"Opening the store was a mammoth job," he said. "It actually was more challenging to open a Home Depot where there was once a Builders Square. Building a new store, you can do what you want, design it the way you want. Here, we had to compromise on some things because the building was already set a certain way. The construction department and all the contractors did a fantastic job."

Cianfrani said he thinks the Pinecrest store is in a prime location, that the store will do well and anticipates getting customers from throughout south Miami-Dade County.

"We’re gonna get a little bit of everything," he said. "We’re gonna get some of the Gables business, of course Kendall and Pinecrest — hopefully we’ll get all of Pinecrest as long as we do our job right — the Perrine area, even Cutler Ridge. We’ll get some overflow from everybody."

And, he’s probably correct in his assumption, since the nearest Home Depot stores are in Cutler Ridge to the south, N. Kendall Drive and 127th Avenue on the west and SW Eighth Street and 30th Avenue to the north.

And so, aside from low prices, just what makes Home Depot so special and what sets it apart from its competitors? Cianfrani says the secret is in the people.

"We train them better," he said. "We spend a lot of time in the hiring process and I’m always looking for the best people. Out of 10 people applying for a job, I’ll look for the best one. And once we get the right person, we train them. We let them grow, we don’t expect them to always have the answer, just as long as they go out of their way to get it. That’s what we want and that’s what the customer deserves."