For shoppers looking to buy a ceiling fan, they can browse the 100 Lowe’s has in store or the 8,000 more the home improvement store has online.
And that’s the power of a marketplace: More options.
Joseph Cano, Senior Vice President of Digital at Lowe’s, knows shoppers don’t want 8,000 ceiling fan options. But there’s a much higher likelihood now that one of those fans will be the one the shopper wants, Cano said.
“Anytime you hopefully now search on Lowe’s, you will absolutely find something that you actually need, whereas before you probably didn’t,” Cano said. “It might’ve given you a null page or might’ve given you something that’s like, ‘Oh, this isn’t exactly what I was looking for.’”
A “null” page is when a shopper entered a keyword in the search box and Lowe’s returned zero results. Prior to launching a marketplace, this instance occurred with moderate frequency, Cano said.
Lowe’s Offers Two Marketplace Managers to Brands
A marketplace is when a retailer allows other brand manufacturers to sell on the retailer’s own website and handle the logistics of shipping, as opposed to the retailer buying the product from the manufacturer wholesale and then selling it to consumers itself. For retailers, they can quickly expand their assortment without needing to warehouse or ship the product themselves. Brand manufacturers get their product in front of that retailer’s audience.
Amazon.com is the most popular retailer with this model, but in the last few years many other retailers have started operating marketplaces including Walmart, Target, Macy’s, Kohl’s, Ulta, Best Buy, Michaels and dozens more.
Lowe’s launched its marketplaces more than one year ago in December 2024 with commerce and fulfillment vendor Rithum. Lowe’s already used Rithum for drop shipping, and it was a quick way to launch and “beta test” a marketplace, Cano said.
Keeping with the “more is better” theme, after a few months Lowe’s added a second marketplace technology to its backend; In May 2025, Lowe’s added Mirakl’s marketplace technology.
Cano has used Mirakl at retailers prior to coming to Lowe’s, and it is one of the dominant vendors in this space. (Mirakl operates marketplaces for 450 retailers worldwide.) To the consumer, nothing changes, but on the backend, brands can choose to upload and manage their product listings through either platform.
“We decided to do two (marketplace technology platforms), because however we can make it easier for the seller community to onboard and get product in front of customers in a faster way we want to do — because that ultimately enhances our own customer experience,” Cano said.
Lowe’s Adds Something for Everyone Related to Home
For consumers, the largest change that they would see with a marketplace is an expanded assortment, as Lowe’s now has thousands of additional SKUs on its website. (Cano said the retail chain added less than one million additional SKUs but declined to share an exact number.)
“We don’t want to be the endless aisle of everything,” Cano said. “We are still trying to curate this somewhat with our sellers, but overall, if the customer has intent, they think they want to buy this from Lowe’s, we are going to go after it if it makes sense.”
A great example of this is saunas, Cano said. The retailer noticed many shoppers searching for saunas on Lowes.com, but the merchant didn’t have any to show them. Now, Lowe’s sells more than 200 different saunas through marketplace merchants.
Lowe’s authorizes each seller on its marketplace but it does not vet each SKU. In fact, some sellers have uploaded 30,000 SKUs, Cano said.
This aligns with Lowes’ strategy of “good, better, best” in having an offering for everyone, such as a cheaper item for someone’s first apartment or a high-end finishing for a shopper building a custom home.
“Focusing on the value and focusing on the higher price point has been our sweet spot right now, which has been exciting,” he said. “So selling anything from a $2,000 Kohler faucet — which I don’t think we ever would’ve stocked in store — to a $2,500 sauna, which we’re also selling, which is consistently on our bestseller list.”
Marketing the Marketplace
By offering more products in more categories, Lowe’s is increasing its SEO relevance.
Now, the brand has more products it can talk about in its paid and organic marketing, including search and social media, which all helps to drive more traffic to its site. In fact, Lowe’s has increased the traffic to its site from organic sources, Cano said without sharing specifics.
“Some of those areas we just weren’t showing up,” he said. “Someone said, ‘Hey, I want a ceiling fan for $29,’ or ‘I want a Sauna.’ We weren’t showing up before. Now we are. And so that’s just making us more relevant.”
Cano’s marketplace team is working with the marketing team to ensure the marketplace merchants have deals that coordinate with what the marketing team is offering. For example, for Black Friday and Cyber Monday 2025, Lowe’s had 3,000 marketplace items that were on sale, which generated some of the “highest marketplace demand days,” he said.
“We’re trying to make it as easy for the marketing team as they can to get customers to understand we’ve got this new breadth and assortment and offering,” Cano said. “The great thing is most customers are finding it regardless because it’s their search intent.”
Along with working with marketing team, Cano knows he needs to make more of an effort to inform the store associates about the marketplace. About 80% of Lowe’s store shoppers browse online before they go to the store. If a shopper visits a store and doesn’t find what she likes, Lowe’s need to ensure that associates tell the shopper about the online marketplace with the wide selection of products.
The Lowe’s Marketplace Contributes to Online Sales Growth
Internally at Lowe’s there is a lot of excitement around the marketplace, Cano said. He credits the marketplace with helping buoy Lowe’s’ digital sales. In Q1 2025, digital sales increased 6% year over year and in Q3, Lowe’s’ online sales increase 11.3% year over year.
“Usually on Lowe’s, people don’t buy just one thing. They buy multiple things; they are buying things for their entire bathroom, their entire kitchen, their entire room,” Cano said. “So what we are seeing is that customers were increasing their AOV was really exciting for us. … We have definitely accelerated growth and marketplace was a key factor in that.”
Another metric the retail chain looks at to measure a product’s success is “likelihood to recommend.” Customers of marketplace products are giving Lowe’s the same likelihood to recommend score as a customer of traditional Lowes.com products, he said.
“What that says in layman’s terms is if it’s our own product or if it’s our marketplace product, customers are viewing it in the same way,” Cano said. “They’re getting it shipped in a very fast way and it’s very price competitive as well. And so customers are saying, yes, we actually love this type of product and we want more of it.”
