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Lowes Coming to Canada

Heard on the news last night that Lowes is coming to Canada, specifically Toronto to start. Never having been in one, is there anything about them to distinguish them from another big box home store?

Reply to
Upscale
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Reply to
Mark and Kim Smith

We had a HD here for about three years before Lowes arrived. The HD got very dirty, the parking lot has craters in it and the part time help didn't know their products. They did install self service check out.

Lowes arrived with a bright new store two years ago. Today it is still bright and clean, it has more "home" type stuff like lighting and appliances. The parking lot is well maintained. Lately they have reduced the number of cashiers so checkout has slowed.

Neither store can get a special order right. Neither store stocks good woodworking tools or accessories.

On balance my wife really prefers Lowes and I appreciate clean stock and not exercising my Jeep's off road abilities in the parking lot.

We still buy paint and BBQ accessories at HD, but the parking lot has even larger craters in it now.

Reply to
Howard

That's been my experience too. There is one of each within my driving radius and the HD is smaller, crowded, darker and dirtier. But they have a lardger selection of flooring (tiles and such) and the do have self checkout (which I happen to like).

Lowes is bigger brighter and cleaner, wider isles with less clutter. It is a more pleasant shopping experience. In the end, however, I shop there because it is closer.

-Steve

Reply to
Stephen M

Lowes does a tremendous amount of market research and their managers are measured very heavily on customer satisfaction.

They design and light and stock the stores in favor of what women prefer. Somebody finally noticed that women make way over 50% of all purchases in big box stores.

Lowes is much preferred over Home Depot by women.

Reply to
Pat Barber

The one that recently opened in Buffalo seems to like to restock their lumber isle during normal business hours keeping the isles closed to the customers?

Reply to
no(SPAM)vasys

Maybe that's the only times they arrange delivery for some reason.

Reply to
Upscale

HD sells Homelite, Remington and Poulan chainsaws, Lowes sells Echo and Husqvarna. They both carry a fair amount of homeowner quality tools, and limited backup for those tools. I've got a fair number of both near me. I try HD first and then go to Lowes, because of distance, if Lowes was closer, I'd go there first.

Dave in Fairfax

Reply to
Dave in Fairfax

It'll be interesting to see how they do coming so late in the game. They're up against HD, Rona, Building Box, Tim'br and others.

Based on the other responses, Rona already has the bright lights and clean store thing down pat, so Lowes won't seem so much of a change.

Tower records came and went and Krispy Kreme isn't making things work up here - I wonder if Lowes is up to it? I'll be watching.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Daly

The news said that eventually, they were planning in excess of 100 stores. Guess they figure if the blitz Canada hard enough, the competition will have to make room.

Reply to
Upscale

I think I mentioned this before, but here in Spokane WA Lowes bought out a chain called Eagle Hardware. If you went into Eagle and asked for a

2" long 3/8" bolt, the clerk asked what grade you wanted.

Then Lowes took over. It is now known locally as LOWES: Less Of What Eagle Stocked :-).

That said, they do seem to carry more of what I buy than Home Depot.

Reply to
lgb

Well, I'll be checking them out. Went to a Home Depot a month ago to pick up a sharper 3/8-16 die for threading some rod and that was the only size they were out of. Went again two weeks later and they were still out of stock of just that size. Ended up using the older die I already had, but not as clean a thread job as I might have wanted. Did what I needed though. Should have saved my time and effort by going to the local Canadian Tire.

Reply to
Upscale

"Upscale" wrote in news: snipped-for-privacy@rogers.com:

Up until the (b)Lowe's switch to "Tradesman" and "GMC" as their housebrand tools, I thought Lowes had the best power tool price points. Here they still carry Bosch, Milwaukee, DeWalt, Hitachi and Makita. There's still a few Delta items left, and mine carries one Jet contractors saw.

Other than that -- Not really.

Just prepare yourself to be really aggravated when neither one has what you're looking for.

Reply to
Patrick Conroy

Biggest difference, as others have pointed out, is in the age of the stores. The new Lowe's here are much better stocked hardware-wise, much cleaner and brighter than the older HD.

Reply to
ATP*

Lowes also sells Poulan. I bought a 20" "Pro" (snicker, snicker) chainsaw there Monday. I also made the mistake of asking the clerk in the aisle if he had any ripping chains. After reading the same labels I had just spent

20 minutes reading he hailed another guy walking an aisle over. They spent several minutes re-reading the labels and then both went off in pursuit of another guy who, they said, would know. Apparently they both met with foul play or they would have been back by now.

I just hope that 'the guy who knows' is okay. Apparently there is only one per store.

Bill

Reply to
Bill

When Home Depot first moved into Toronto, they took over Aikenhead's. Same problem - a supplier of all sorts of neat stuff replaced by a supplier of the lowest common denominator.

Mike

Reply to
Michael Daly

Aikenheads on Temperance street in downtown Toronto. Man, does that bring back memories. Bought my first tablesaw there when I was 18 years old. 10 years later when I wound up in a wheelchair, I was still able to get to all five storeys of that building because they had an elevator. Back then, that was unusual for a low rise building. I spent countless hours buying and window shopping at Aikenheads. Went down there one time after a three month absence and found that the building was demolished. Man was I crestfallen. Didn't find out until 6 months later that Home Depot bought them out.

Reply to
Upscale

Sounds like Belknap Hardware in Louisville when I was growing up. Several floors, floor to ceiling drawers and cabinets in row after row. And always some clerk who looked like he'd been there forever and knew exactly what was in every drawer and where it was :-).

Really irritates me that places like that are gone.

Reply to
lgb

We had a place like that up until the 1980s. A hardware store that had everything but only the guys who worked forever knew where it all was. You could easily get lost even though it wasn't that big really.

The fire marshall was finally going to close them down due tofire code problems, so they agreed to build a new building behind the old one. The old building was torn down for a parking lot.

The city just bought the current building they are in and is tearing it down for townhouses. The hardware store is building a new store down the road that is over twice the size of the current store.

Brian Elfert

Reply to
Brian Elfert

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