Lowe's Companies

The asymmetry defines the rivalry: Home Depot commands 47% market share with $163 billion revenue and 2,350+ stores, while Lowe's holds 28% share with $83 billion and 1,700+ stores. Home Depot extracts 50% of revenue from professional contractors; Lowe's manages only 30%. When your competitor doubles down on the most valuable niche with an $18.3 billion SRS Distribution acquisition and a $4.3 billion GMS purchase, you face classic competitive pressure. Lowe's response reveals whether niche partitioning can protect a smaller organism when a larger predator invades your territory.

Lowe's bet on differentiation—separating rather than directly competing. While Home Depot optimizes for Pros with trade credit, AI-driven logistics, and bulk materials, Lowe's cultivates the DIY aesthetic niche: curated in-store experiences, appliances, lighting, home décor. The strategy worked for decades because the niches didn't fully overlap. But housing turnover's collapse (7% mortgage rates locking homeowners into sub-3% loans) created a coordination problem that starves both organisms. Fiscal 2024 sales fell 3% to $83.67 billion. Comparable sales inched up just 0.2% in Q4 2024, 1.1% in Q2 2025, 0.4% in Q3 2025—the metabolic equivalent of hibernation, not growth.

Lowe's transformation strategy pursues adaptive radiation into adjacent niches. The Foundation Building Materials acquisition unlocks a $250 billion Pro total addressable market; Artisan Design Group builds full-spectrum interior solutions for mid-sized pros. This isn't abandoning DIY—it's bet-hedging across customer types and project scales. Simultaneously, Lowe's closed 406 stores over seven years while Home Depot added 56, a strategic divergence that looks like retreat until you examine web sales per store: Lowe's achieved 26.5% five-year CAGR versus Home Depot's 21.0%. Fewer, more efficient stores with stronger digital integration demonstrate resource allocation optimizing quality over quantity.

Yet the risk persists. When a dominant competitor controls twice your revenue and aggressively expands into professional segments with billion-dollar acquisitions, niche partitioning depends on niches remaining distinct. If Pros and DIY customers converge—if economic pressure forces DIYers to hire pros, or if Pros start shopping aesthetics-focused retailers—Lowe's differentiation erodes. The organism survives by occupying space Home Depot doesn't: the homeowner who values design over bulk, the small contractor who prefers showroom experience to warehouse efficiency, the rural market underserved by HD's urban density. CEO Marvin Ellison's Total Home strategy opening 5-10 new stores in 2025 signals confidence these niches remain viable. Whether they remain large enough to support an $83 billion organism against a $163 billion predator is the biological question that defines Lowe's next decade.