We needed to reach and inspire the DIYers of tomorrow in a new way to appeal to the native drive for hands-on learning, building, and project completion that they already love about Roblox. Redcliff City is a popular game within Roblox, with millions of players visiting each month. But it didn’t have a place to experiment with DIY – so we needed to build our own. Our competitors are more relevant with younger audiences, so we needed to do something that would make them like us that leaned into their natural curiosity and desire to learn new things in-game and IRL. And so, bringing the experience of doing they’d experience in the real world at a Kids Workshop onto Roblox felt like a natural progression for The Home Depot – allowing us to reach this new audience in a way that was entirely innovative and imaginative.

We built the first ever home improvement store in Roblox’s Redcliff City and re-created The Home Depot’s iconic Kids Workshops through unique projects kids could build themselves. Projects like building a birdhouse, flower garden, pool, and even a car or helicopter. We refreshed the projects every 1-2 months to keep them interested and coming back.

The projects available in the Redcliff City Kids Workshops were seasonally relevant and aligned to whatever the actual in-store project was. Of course, Roblox enables a different kind of building- so we made sure to have fun projects kids could enjoy playing within the game, like a car, or a helicopter, or a pool.

Creating a Home Depot store within Redcliff City required working with TheHome Depot Store Experience Team- the same Team responsible for building real world stores. The layout and scale of the store, the aisles, were all planned to ensure an authentic store experience.

We needed to inspire the next generation of DIYers where they are building,exploring, and creating: Roblox.

Our goal was to build relevance with a new generation of DIYers by finding a creative and innovative way to inspire them. Players go to Roblox for a safe space to problem solve and discover new things, and DIYers and Roblox Gamers are one in the same – innately curious to problem solve, discover, and build. Key competitors are viewed as more relevant with Gen Z and Alpha, so we needed to lean into their natural curiosity and desire to learn new things in-game and IRL.

This was a natural progression for The Home Depot’s Kids Workshops and allowed us to reach this new audience in a way that was entirely innovative, imaginative, and relevant.

When a kid enters The Home Depot in Redcliff City in Roblox, they’re coming into a true-to-scale Home Depot, with the exact layout of a real-world store. And getting kids to build just like in the real-world Kids Workshops events was key, which is what made the experience unique and kept kids coming back for more. But Roblox enables a different kind of building- so we made sure to have fun projects kids would enjoy using in the game like a car, helicopter, or a pool in addition to simpler projects like a birdhouse and picnic benches. These items are all unique to the game: if you want the item, you can only get it at The Home Depot. And by partnering with the game developer, the entire experience is woven into and part of the game itself vs. a bolted-on in-game brand execution.

Building our first virtual store in Redcliff City in Roblox was a massive success.

Just like in the real world, The Home Depot quickly became an essential part of the community with double-digit lifts to in-store workshop reported attendance and affinity; 10M players in 7 months.