Lowe’s Companies, Inc. (/loʊz/), often shortened to Lowe’s, is an American retail company specializing in home improvement.[5] Headquartered in Mooresville, North Carolina, the company operates a chain of retail stores in the United States and Canada. As of February 2021, Lowe’s and its related businesses operates 2,197 home improvement and hardware stores in North America.[2]
Lowe’s is the second-largest hardware chain in the United States (previously the largest in the U.S. until surpassed by The Home Depot in 1989) behind rival The Home Depot and ahead of Menards.[6] It is also the second-largest hardware chain in the world, also behind The Home Depot but ahead of European retailers Leroy Merlin, B&Q, and OBI.[7]
The first Lowe’s store, North Wilkesboro Hardware, opened in North Wilkesboro, North Carolina, in 1921 by Lucius Smith Lowe. After Lowe died in 1940, the business was inherited by his daughter, Ruth Buchan, who sold the company to her brother, James Lowe, that same year. James took on his brother-in-law Carl Buchan as a partner in 1943.[8]
Buchan anticipated the dramatic increase in construction after World War II, and under his management, the store focused on hardware and building materials.[9] Before then, the product mix had also included notions, dry goods, horse tack, snuff, produce, and groceries. The company bought a second location in Sparta, North Carolina, in 1949.[10]
In 1952, Buchan became the sole owner of Lowe’s and the company was incorporated as Lowe’s North Wilkesboro Hardware. In 1954, Jim Lowe started the Lowes Foods grocery store chain.[11]
By 1955, Buchan quickly expanded the company by opening stores in the North Carolina cities of Asheville, Charlotte, and Durham. By the end of 1955, Buchan had opened a total of six stores.
In 1960, Buchan died of a heart attack at age 44.[12] His five-man executive team, which included Robert Strickland and Leonard Herring, took the company public in 1961 under the name Lowe’s Companies Inc.[9] By 1962, Lowe’s operated 21 stores and reported annual revenues of $32 million.[13] Lowe’s began trading on the New York Stock Exchange in 1979.[8]
Lowe’s suffered in the 1980s due to market conditions and increasing competition from the new big-box store chain, The Home Depot. For a while, Lowe’s resisted adopting the mega-store format partly because its management believed the smaller towns where Lowe’s mostly operated would not support huge stores. However, Lowe’s eventually adopted the big-box format to survive.
Lowe’s has since grown nationally, as it was aided by the purchase of the Renton, Washington–based Eagle Hardware & Garden company in 1999.[14][15] The first store outside the United States was in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada.[16] According to its website, Lowe’s has operated/serviced more than 2,355 locations in the United States, Canada, and Mexico alone,[17] although the Mexican stores were closed in the late 2010s.[18]
Lowe’s formerly operated in Mexico with 14 locations: 8 in Monterrey, Nuevo León, 1 in Saltillo, Coahuila, 1 in Hermosillo, Sonora, 1 in Chihuahua, Chihuahua, 1 in Culiacán, Sinaloa, 1 in Aguascalientes, Aguascalientes and 1 in León, Guanajuato. Lowe’s Mexico closed all its stores on April 10, 2019.[19]