Lowe's Closing 51 Stores
Posted: November 6th, 2018, 8:40 am
20 in the US; 31 in Canada. This comes on the heels of the shutdown of Lowe's-owned Orchard Supply Hardware (OSH.)
There is a fairly new Lowe's very close to my house. It is convenient, and nice because it is fairly new, but I often end up leaving empty handed and driving to Home Depot instead because Lowe's doesn't have what I need. Some items I won't even bother going to Lowe's for. The store at times is very poorly staffed also. On more than one occasion, I have seen ZERO checkstands open (including the lumber end) and forced self-checkout as the only option, and remember well when somebody was attempting to drag a sheet of plywood across the self checkout scanner while the attendant was nowhere to be found, while there was only one person at the service counter who looked overwhelmed. I will say that they are doing a little better at staffing the front end now, but I still get the feeling that the store has bare-bones staffing as it's hard to find anybody on the floor. Home Depot isn't much better at the front end but they usually have enough people working the floor.Brian Lutz wrote: ↑November 6th, 2018, 9:41 am None in Washington or Oregon, which is honestly a bit of a surprise. There are a number of fairly marginal stores in the area that were acquired when they bought Eagle Hardware (which prior to its acquisition had 37 stores in nine states) in 1998. Eagle had pretty nice stores back when they were around, but Lowe's has done a poor job of keeping up the stores. It also seems like they're a lot less likely than Home Depot to have items that we're looking for in stock, to the point that we frequently end up walking out empty handed when we go to the one in Everett. They did shut down the Bellevue Lowe's store a couple of years ago (another former Eagle) but much like the situation with the now former Safeway plants in Bellevue I suspect it's a situation where they could make more money from selling the land than from operating the store.
That said, some of the purpose built Lowe's stores I've been to (such as the Renton Landing and Monroe stores) have been quite nice.
Been to Lowe's several times over the past week. They're in the process of adding a ton of Craftsman tools so that's well underway.Super S wrote: ↑November 6th, 2018, 10:15 amThere is a fairly new Lowe's very close to my house. It is convenient, and nice because it is fairly new, but I often end up leaving empty handed and driving to Home Depot instead because Lowe's doesn't have what I need. Some items I won't even bother going to Lowe's for. The store at times is very poorly staffed also. On more than one occasion, I have seen ZERO checkstands open (including the lumber end) and forced self-checkout as the only option, and remember well when somebody was attempting to drag a sheet of plywood across the self checkout scanner while the attendant was nowhere to be found, while there was only one person at the service counter who looked overwhelmed. I will say that they are doing a little better at staffing the front end now, but I still get the feeling that the store has bare-bones staffing as it's hard to find anybody on the floor. Home Depot isn't much better at the front end but they usually have enough people working the floor.Brian Lutz wrote: ↑November 6th, 2018, 9:41 am None in Washington or Oregon, which is honestly a bit of a surprise. There are a number of fairly marginal stores in the area that were acquired when they bought Eagle Hardware (which prior to its acquisition had 37 stores in nine states) in 1998. Eagle had pretty nice stores back when they were around, but Lowe's has done a poor job of keeping up the stores. It also seems like they're a lot less likely than Home Depot to have items that we're looking for in stock, to the point that we frequently end up walking out empty handed when we go to the one in Everett. They did shut down the Bellevue Lowe's store a couple of years ago (another former Eagle) but much like the situation with the now former Safeway plants in Bellevue I suspect it's a situation where they could make more money from selling the land than from operating the store.
That said, some of the purpose built Lowe's stores I've been to (such as the Renton Landing and Monroe stores) have been quite nice.
Lowe's sure is taking their sweet time adding Craftsman though. All I have seen so far are toolboxes and a couple small hand tool sets. I get the impression that they are unsure if they are going to carry the full Craftsman lineup or use it as a secondary line and keep their Kobalt brand. With Sears rapidly winding down, Lowe's could gain from that.
This is the same CEO who closed all those old (decades old) small town JCP Stores so I am not surprised he seems to be following a similar path with "small size" stores at Lowe's (or OSH).
That was my impression back in 2010/2011 when I was shopping for appliances. It seems like HD has since learned from its mistakes and went upscale.cjd wrote: ↑November 13th, 2018, 3:44 pm In my area, both Home Depot (2001) and Lowes (2006) are new builds. I do notice more traffic at HD too and more staff. The staff at Lowes seems just as helpful but there aren't as many on the floor. Plus Home Depot always has four self checkouts open but Lowes only has two and I very rarely see either one open.
I used to be under the impression that Home Depot sold basic items while Lowes sold higher end or more expensive fixtures, etc but I don't know if that's truly the case.