Lowe's Nails Manhattan

Lowe's spent months studying how urban customers live as well as their shopping norms and needs when it was developing its first small-format prototype.The home improvement retailer realized that rather than just trimming its existing 112,000-square-foot model to fit a small urban location offering only a quarter of the space, it would have to build a new format from the ground up, said Lowe's vice president of market and concept development, Jonathan Luster, during a panel discussion at the National Retail Federation's Retail's BIG Show convention and expo in January. The retailer opened its first urban location in Manhattan's Upper West Side in August 2015, and the following month unveiled a second location in Chelsea. The retailer's findings impacted not only inventory — which was adjusted from the assortment in a typical store to offer more products tailored to small apartments — but also the services offered.Most Manhattan residents do not own cars, so the retailer's two small-format locations do not include parking lots. Instead, there is a dedicated aisle for two-wheeled bicycle commuters. While some shoppers come to Lowe's in search of small items they can carry home, many want to have their purchases delivered — a service the retailer promises to complete within one to two days of purchase. Lowe's is leveraging the millions of square feet of retail space it has outside of Manhattan to ensure the speedy delivery and will sometimes also have employees help shoppers carry smaller purchases home. The employees' iconic blue vests serve as a form of advertising that compliments the bus stop ads Lowe's employed to promote its two Manhattan locations.Lowe's also made it easier for shoppers to take home plant purchases by equipping its urban stores with a "potting station." Instead of having to buy bags of soil to take home, shoppers can pot and wrap their purchase to protect it during transit as well as make it easily giftable. "It's been a really, really popular piece to the store," Luster said.Additionally, while a typical store might stock 70 to 80 refrigerators, the retailer's Manhattan locations only have room for 20. To solve for the space constraint, the retailer expanded its offerings through a digital solution dubbed "the next aisle over," which allows shoppers to peruse different brands and alternate colors of the products in stock via touchscreen displays positioned throughout the store. As a further nod to space constraints, the Manhattan locations offer mobile checkout, effectively doubling the register count.Institute members can click here to see the full photo gallery of the Upper West Side store.

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