With the opening of its first metropolitan Baltimore superstore today, home improvement giant Lowe's Cos. Inc. is expecting to win over shoppers from rival retailers by stressing service and a user-friendly layout.
The nation's second-largest home improvement retailer has chosen White Marsh to launch its aggressive expansion in this area, which will include superstores in Glen Burnie next month and in Timonium and Westminster later this year. The Westminster store will replace a 6-year-old Lowe's of about half the size, now the only one in the area.
The White Marsh store, a warehouse-style outlet on Campbell Boulevard with high ceilings, wide aisles and tall stacks of merchandise, opened to the public March 17. An official opening is scheduled for today.
To make shopping more convenient, the store offers touches such as maps of the layout, highly visible prices and a policy of opening additional registers when more than two people are in line.
"When I manage a store, I look at it as a customer would look at it," said Ken Haines, store manager and former manager for Lowe's in Westminster. Haines said he promises "a cleaner, more organized, easier-to-shop, lower-priced destination for the home do-it-yourselfer."
The store, in the Nottingham Square shopping center along with a Target, will employ about 225 people when it finishes hiring, including professionals in the areas of gardening, plumbing, flooring, millwork, paint and electricity.
"It's wonderful. They have everything you want," said Betty Clark, a retired secretary from Abingdon who stopped in yesterday to price unfinished storage cabinets.
North Wilkesboro, N.C.-based Lowe's, with 1998 annual sales of $12.24 billion, is following a strategy of expanding from its rural roots by building 150,000-square-foot superstores in densely populated metropolitan areas such as Dallas, Atlanta and Baltimore. The chain has announced plans to build 30 stores in the Los Angeles area over the next three to four years.
"We're going where the customer need is," said Jule Schreffler, a Lowe's spokeswoman. "The metro areas have a greater number of households and a greater number of households in need of repair, and the trend is for home improvement."
As for opening four new stores in a year, "it's a big commitment to the Baltimore area," Schreffler said. The chain continues to evaluate additional sites, she said.
As it moves into Baltimore, Lowe's faces a formidable rival in Home Depot Inc., which opened its first Maryland store in 1991 and has nine in the Baltimore area and 17 statewide.
"We compete with [Lowe's] in a lot of different markets -- this is not new for Home Depot and Lowe's to be in the same market," said Katrina Blauvelt, a spokeswoman for Home Depot, which is based in Atlanta.
Though Home Depot is the larger chain, both Home Depot and Lowe's have succeeded in markets where the two compete, said Kurt Barnard, president of Barnard's Retail Trend Report.
"They are very worthy competitors, the two," Barnard said. "Consumers will find as they compete, they compete fairly, though in a fierce way. The competition between the two is going to benefit the community."
But it also will turn up the competitive heat on struggling Hechinger Co. in its home territory. For the most recent quarter, which ended Jan. 2, Hechinger posted a loss of $76.2 million and reported a steep slide in sales. In an effort to rebuild its struggling operation, the Largo-based retailer changed its top executive and shored up financing this month.
Lowe's, which sells appliances in addition to the more typical array of home repair and remodeling products, is known for service, presentation and an array of lighting fixtures and chandeliers, Barnard said.
Pub Date: 3/24/99