Lowe's Scales And Optimizes Its Online Marketplace For Vendors And Customers
Lowe's in Castle Rock, Colorado.
Home improvement giant Lowe's has partnered with Software as a Service (SaaS) provider Mirakl to help power Lowe's Marketplace, an online resource for DYI consumers and professionals alike. This will allow Lowe's to greatly expand and optimize its assortment and bring on new vendors.
Michael McClusky, Lowe's vice president of Marketplace, said the company chose Mirakl because it has the proper tooling to onboard a large number of sellers in a frictionless way and because it has the suite of services to manage Lowe's business on a day to day basis. He declined to say exactly how many vendors will be onboarded.
'We're still in the low hundreds but we'll be in the high hundreds very quickly,' he said. 'We've been able to add thousands of new items to our assortment and platform and we have a robust pipeline of sellers on the platform. [The partnership]
Another reason Lowe's chose Mirakl is because it's the biggest in the business with 450 customers worldwide that have online marketplaces running on Mirakl technology, retailers such as Macy's, Saks and Bloomingdale's.
'Retailers are looking for the ability to expand additional categories to offer deeper assortments so maybe you'll have more samples of a particular category from different vendors,' said Scott Eckert, Mirakl's CEO of the Americas.
McClusky noted that the endless aisle also includes products that obviously can't be displayed in stores like swimming pools and infrared saunas. 'We want to rely on the sellers who can help us augment our catalog with items we can't carry in stores,' McClusky said. 'If it is in the home we see a great opportunity to say yes to customers with that, and it's a great way for us to augment what we offer across price points, from opening price point items to premium items.'
Eckert said the agreement is to work together for three and a half years to enable Lowe's to build a significant business on their Marketplace. 'It shows that it's a significant commitment for both Lowe's and us to build this into a major new channel for them,' he said.
The partnership can be renewed after three and a half years. 'Our customers are typically doing three and four year relationships and renewing them, and we expect they would renew them again. We haven't gotten that far since the company is only 13 years old.
Mirakl enables our customers to do over $11 billion of gross merchandise value through their marketplaces. 'That's part of why Mirakl is a leader in the industry,' Eckert said. 'We have some big customers that have created big marketplace businesses using our software.'
Homeowners in the U.S. have $35 trillion in combined equity, and Lowe's is eager to benefit from those who are nesting. 'I just bought a home in Charlotte as I relocated here and as I look around my house, and see all the things that I want to do, I want to see the variety of assortment out there," McClusky said. 'In the current environment we're operating in, from a more macro perspective, if customers are staying in their homes and perhaps not moving, they may want to do these types of refreshes. We see a great opportunity to be an endless aisle and to keep them browsing.'
Among the challenges of the new Marketplace are that it's an entirely new model for Lowe's. 'Every time you bring on a new model, there's a lot of new mechanisms that you're bringing into the fold that you have to get right,' McClusky said. 'Some of the things that we're focused on right now are building a strong foundation on which our seller partners will be able to onboard and operate their businesses.'
Next for the Marketplace, McClusky said Lowe's will be maniacally focused on its seller experience over the coming quarters and years, and making sure the experience is frictionless. An area where Lowe's could add value for sellers is the Lowe's ad network called Lowe's Media Network. 'How do we over time integrate the capability for sellers to drive more revenue to our platform and participate more via ads on lowes.com,' he asked rhetorically. 'That's something where we see a great opportunity to continue to accelerate this business and benefit both sellers and customers.'
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