Worldwide Council of Procuring Facilities CEO Tom McGee discusses the vacation purchasing season and explains how a TikTok ban may negatively impression some retailers on ‘The Claman Countdown.’
Lowe’s CEO Marvin Ellison does not consider bodily shops are a factor of the previous. The truth is, he says they’re the important thing to staying aggressive in at the moment’s retail setting.
“The most important central aggressive benefit of brick-and-mortar retail is your bodily shops and your workers that work in these shops,” Ellison stated throughout a keynote session on the Nationwide Retail Federation’s 2023 expo in New York Metropolis on Monday.
Ellison stated that he has often mentioned this with FedEx founder and former CEO Fred Smith through the years whilst discuss concerning the retail apocalypse gained steam and e-commerce began to develop.
LOWE’S CEO DOESN’T SEE US SLIPPING INTO ‘MASSIVE RECESSION OR ECONOMIC DOWNTURN
Workers of a Lowe’s Dwelling Enchancment retailer assist a buyer load a generator onto a pickup truck in McComb, Mississippi. ( Patrick T. FALLON / AFP) / Getty Photographs)
“I consider that even throughout retail apocalypse discussions that the most important central aggressive benefit of retail is, do you’ve brick-and-mortar shops, and may you join these shops digitally to your on-line website,” Ellison stated.
The chief government’s feedback bolster earlier statements made by the NRF that bodily shops “stay pivotal, particularly now {that a} important proportion of e-commerce orders are fulfilled by shops.”
The commerce group additional famous that the “retail retailer counts proceed to develop with the trade and the broader economic system, regardless of the rising share of e-commerce,” and that “the function of the shop is evolving to help shopping for throughout all channels.”
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Lowe’s has roughly 2,200 bodily shops nationwide, in accordance with Ellison. This implies the corporate basically has 2,200 distribution facilities related to its home and international provide chain, he stated.
Ellison underscored how necessary these places are, significantly when clients want to handle an pressing dwelling restore.

A Lowe’s dwelling enchancment retailer employee climbs down a ladder whereas checking stock on August 21, 2019 in San Bruno, California. ( Justin Sullivan/Getty Photographs / Getty Photographs)
“Subsequent-day supply does not sound almost pretty much as good to you for the time being,” he stated. “At that second, you want same-hour supply.”
Its huge footprint permits Lowe’s clients to position an emergency order on-line and seize it inside an hour via its purchase on-line and pickup in-store or curbside providers, in accordance with Ellison.
He additionally stated the corporate’s partnership with Instacart permits for tens of hundreds of merchandise to be delivered inside an hour.

Buyers patronage Lowe’s home-improvement retailer on Might 20, 2020 in Farmingdale, New York. (Bruce Bennett/Getty Photographs / Getty Photographs)
“We won’t try this with out our shops as a result of these shops are the important node that can decide and get that product prepared both for the client to come back in and decide it up or for us to do a fast…gig network-type supply,” Ellison stated.
He stated shops are each important and the important thing to creating an omnichannel community “the place every thing is related.”
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Ellison stated they permit for the corporate to make “a call based mostly on the situation of the shop, location of a provide chain facility to get that product to the client in essentially the most environment friendly manner.”
Ticker | Safety | Final | Change | Change % |
---|---|---|---|---|
LOW | LOWE’S COS. INC. | 209.52 | -2.64 | -1.24% |
“That can’t occur with out the central availability of the shops,” he continued.
Transferring ahead, Ellison stated that the one factor the client “will demand from this level on is comfort, however comfort with out friction.”