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The Retail Media Podcast, in association with Mirakl , is a 10-part series detailing the journey from Retail to Media. Starting at NRF’s Big Retail show, this series will traverse to the festival of digital media that is Cannes Lions, with engaging and informative conversations in between.
Global retail media guru Colin Lewis will be joined by special guests each episode to discuss the rapidly growing ecosystem of retail media, and its power to not only reach substantial target audiences but also help brands build and maintain loyalty.
Welcome to the Retail Media Podcast. And I'm live here with Joe Carroll, SVP, digital and ecommerce from Lowe's. Joe, welcome to the podcast. Thank you so much for having me here. Now the first thing is tell us about you and tell us about who you work for I think our audience really wants to know that.
Joe:Absolutely. So I work for Lowe's. It is one of the number one home improvement retailers in The United States. I've been here for about six months, so I'm a little new. But previous to this, I was at Amazon and Zappos, also walmartecom, jack.com, Saks Fifth Avenue.
Joe:You name it, I've been in the wonderful world of retail and e commerce for about twenty five plus years. Not to age myself, but very exciting space to be in. And what I love about it is that every single day something is different and it's changing, especially with AI. So it is such a great space to be in that you never do the same thing twice in one day. Well, if
Colin:you started twenty five years ago, Joe, that was when you started at age five.
Joe:Of course. Yes. I was in the five or six.
Colin:That's correct. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The math the math is correct.
Colin:Our audience here is international. So give us a little bit more detail into the detail around Lowe's and understanding what that is because there's some fantastic stories around how you've, you know, not just with Digit and Commercehab, but also these amazing things you're doing for the trade or a and in Australia, if we were in Australia, we call them tradies. Yeah. So Yeah. The trained professional bit as
Joe:well is, like, a fantastic part of the story.
Colin:So let's start off. Tell me about Lowe's in more detail. Absolutely. So when you
Joe:think of Lowe's, I would say in The UK, like a V and G would come to mind as something that's very similar. So it is a is a place where you can find everything from lumber to buy, to start building a home, home decor as far as furniture, tile, bathroom vanities, anything that you would think for your home that you would need to either renovate, to fix, that is what we are known for. So we love to kind of talk about Lowe's as the total home solution. I mean, it kind of had a total home strategy. So we sell everything from screws to smart home devices, to appliances like washing machines and dishwashers and refrigerators, to redoing your kitchens and your bathroom, to redoing your lawn.
Joe:We have a huge lawn care, area, and that's actually one of our biggest growing areas right now.
Colin:So in this one here, it's total home. Yeah. It's total home. Great way. I I thought it was such a good way to put it.
Colin:Total home package from the grass to move that. Joe, the one thing in our preparation, you totally written a bit up. This is the dream job for you because you're a DIY king at home
Joe:as well. Oh, I love it. So, my husband actually is an interior designer. So he only kind of, helps me kind of get to this kind of DIY space. So I love renovating.
Joe:I think this is, my fourth home I'm renovating in five years. You're doing for Polish with me. I know. I am. You know, it's just every time I'm like, well, this little thing can be changed.
Joe:We can update this. And that's the kind of customer that we love. So for me, we're just finished one of our Parlor bathrooms, downstairs. We're currently retiling our kitchen right now, adding in some cabinetry and actually wrapping cabinets as a fun little DIY project. So instead of actually replacing my cabinets, I'm wrapping them in a fun maple wood to kind of make it look a little bit more modern.
Joe:So it is a very exciting space to be in. And I love to just consistently do little tiny improvements across the board because as most people kind of know in The US and globally, your home is one of your most important valued assets. So you wanna make sure that you're taking care of it as well as maintaining it in the way that
Colin:you should be. Joe, have a feeling our audience is gonna be calling you to actually do the bathroom work and do that kind of wrap thing around as well. So alternative moonlighting career available for you right now is where a worldwide ad for Joe's skills.
Joe:That is absolutely correct. Eagle Scout at its core. That's a good point.
Colin:Set up a marketplace within the whole Lowe's ecommerce ecosystem. Tell us a bit about the marketplace. What was the thinking there? What's the drivers? And how's it all working out?
Joe:Yeah. So I would say our stores, if you have about 1,700 stores in The United States and growing, we have everything that is what we would say our core assortment. So everything that you really would need. But if people want something maybe a little bit extra or special, we do have some extended aisle things, but they were a little harder to find. You had to kind of ask an associate.
Joe:So what we've done at Marketplace is kind of partnered with people like you, Miracle, and said, what can we do to offer an expanded assortment of different offerings? Whether that was expanding the amount of faucets that we have or going into new categories like saunas and trampolines. And again, anything that you could possibly want for your home. And the great thing is that you know, this is something that we have been talking about for a couple years as a total company. And overall, we've just realized that, you know, sometimes you don't always have the bandwidth to do every single project.
Joe:It's amazing about marketplaces that we're creating a great platform so that other sellers who have these amazing products can onboard their product catalogs, do it in about 80% faster time. We can offer this great service that we're offering in store with that expanded assortment online and all store associates actually also have the capability to sell those expanded assortments online,
Colin:which is amazing. The one thing I find amazing in DIY and home improvement is there's obviously a very long tail of of products, and brands were important as well. Such huge amount of SKUs as you see. The total home total home, package, if you will Yeah. Can be, that sort of, like, half inch, self tapping screw right up to the full kitchen.
Colin:Correct. It's quite it's quite big or the lawn in the back garden. Yeah. So scale in that kind of context, scale sells because then to the consumer, the the shopper, you know, Joe going up buying his tiles on Saturday, you know it's all going to be there, whether it's online or in store. I assume that's the kind of driver of the thinking.
Colin:That is absolutely the drive. So as we look to our customers,
Joe:the one thing they don't have is time. So I'm sure that's a kind of consistent for everybody. So what we wanted to really do was say, you can get anything that you want for your home at Lowe's. You don't have to go to multiple places. You don't have to go and shop in multiple places.
Joe:You can come to the store, get everything that you have, and you can actually look online before, reserve things in store, pick it up, and then go through and browse and say, is there anything else that I missed? Do I need cleaning supplies? Do I need pet supplies? We also offer that. So again, anything that's under that roof and also with roofing, we sell everything.
Joe:And so that is really the kind of key to our message is we want to be that most helpful total home improvement store for you so that you can trust us, that we can get anything to you that
Colin:you want. That's the ultimate cross sell, Joe, which is where you just say, everything under one roof, but we also have roofing as well. Yes. Oh my god. I I I should work in marketing.
Colin:You shouldn't work in marketing. Podcast. I'm not. Now, the one thing I've been pretty impressed at because I've rarely seen it elsewhere is how you think about what you call pro, pro or I would call the trade customer Yeah. Both in, obviously, in store, but also the in the marketplace context.
Colin:That that's something that's really worth deep diving because it's very rare to see it, particularly through a marketplace lens. So tell us a little bit more about that.
Joe:Yeah. So the great thing is we listen to our pros. We love our professional. We love our contractors, our electricians, our millworking, you know, people. It it's such a great business for us, and we want to be known as a very trusted resource for them.
Joe:So we listened to them. We said, what else would you like to see? Well, we want to see X, Y, and Z categories. You want to see more options of this. So we're utilizing all of that data, taking that in and saying, okay, what sellers can be on board so that we actually can get this product for our tradesmen?
Joe:Also, it's a little known fact, we've got a great program at Lowe's. We actually help sponsor people that want to get into trades, help train them and think, hey, if want to be an electrician, we can help you along with that. And to me, that's amazing because we are creating a great ecosystem of saying, if you might be floundering and wanting to know what your next career move can be, if you want to get into that trades or that pro space, we at Lowe's can help you. And in turn, we obviously would love for you to shop with us and use us as your trusted resource. So if we can help people get jobs, create amazing careers, and then also help them build their career with having all the in stock product in store and online, then giving them that endless aisle to actually choose from to surprise and delight their customer.
Joe:To me, that is amazing. Enriching people's lives, especially now, I think that is huge for us. And most of the people don't do things like that.
Colin:Oh, well, it feels to me that this is actually sort of like your alternative career if this whole ecommerce thing doesn't work out. You know? Could go with, like, one of the Lowe's things.
Joe:100%. That is correct. Again, I'll just tap into my old Eagle Scout electrician modeling, and I I can I'm trying to get back to it. Well, no
Colin:better man. Now as we think about this, we we gotta move into, say, talking about how you think about we should maybe through the lens of this marketplace. Yeah. Because, honestly, you've got a lot more SKUs, a lot more products, huge long tail, and you got big brands in the in the fact tail, if you will. So how do you think about Weeter Media as you layer that over, Rockford?
Joe:Yes. So Jen Rolson, who is our CMO, has done an amazing job about kinda starting off this retail media group for us. And what's great about that is, you know, I don't think anyone has time to go through 400 pages of items. So what we wanna do is really focus on the things that customers care about the most. So we really kind of match search terms with what we have and say, what is a propensity that these customers are going to purchase?
Joe:And then showcasing, hey, some of these great new brands. Because you might not know that Lowe's sells things like spas and saunas or pet playgrounds, flip and slides, all of those type of things. So when you have like a media group that can actually help sponsor some of those ads and say, hey, you might not have thought that Lowe's has this as you walk into a store, but we do. And that is the really exciting part is that the curation for us really helps. And media is the perfect way to do that.
Joe:Is it showing customers that we have this, we have the product for you, and then it creates a great customer experience and journey for them where they're actually staying on a little bit longer. So as we've looked at people that add things from marketplace into their cart, they spend more in kind of the first party assortment as well. So they find something that they love and they buy some more core assortments. So it is amazing to see that it is working. I think there is so much more we can do within this media space than we are just getting started.
Colin:Yeah. One of the things that everybody's experienced when they go to a Lowe's, like, Home Probe or DOI, whatever, is you don't just go in and buy one thing. It's not like going to the grocery store and buying milk. Yeah. You're going in to do one thing, and then there's this and this.
Colin:So the online experience then really helps in that because to a sense that we're not shopping that often. Well, you are, Joe, obviously.
Joe:Of course. Yes.
Colin:The the rest of us.
Joe:If if you're renovating something, gonna be your kids,
Colin:do a job. It's it's not being fun. I'm not going in. I get dragged in, and I'm, like, looking around. And every time we come out, I think we came for two things, but then the car is groaning afterwards, and I'm groaning afterwards
Joe:as well.
Colin:Yeah. Yes. It's very interesting in a lot allowing that dynamic as well with online because I'm just purely talking in store. Yes. Tell me, do you you know, the the the word that we always use of the word marketplace and to a certain extent, we're reaching the use the word flywheel.
Colin:Is that language you guys use entirely to kind of think about this? 100. Marketplace is part
Joe:of the flywheel that's going to help us get to where we need to go to our North Star to make sure that we do have everything. There are sole assortments that we actually want to kind of get into, different type of tool sets, different type of flooring and siding and tile work and millwork. So it is just at the beginning right now. We know we just launched a couple months ago with Miracle and Marketplace. So the great thing is we've got a huge amount of sellers that are in the pipeline, really excited to actually get on board with us.
Joe:And what that's exciting for me is that we are bringing an omni channel experience in and you're seeing the amount of items that people are actually choosing grow. You're seeing people that are actually coming in saying, okay, I'm buying some of this stuff from a buy online pickup in store. But I'm also actually going through the aisle and saying, oh, maybe I need this. Maybe I need that as well. And also our customers, we really focus in on an LTR, which is kind of a likely to recommend.
Joe:And our scores, if we don't get a nine or a 10, we say we did a bad job. And so what we want to do is create these great associates in store that are knowledgeable, that can help people find anything that they want in store online. And that's been really successful for us.
Colin:I thought LTR was a
Joe:long term relationship. Know what? We're changing the script. We're changing the script here.
Colin:CLD and LTR. Yeah. Amazing.
Joe:You know, it's the right KPIs. You know, obviously everybody wants to sell things. We wanna make sure that, you know, we're doing everything we can for the company. But if you focus in on the right inputs, which is creating an amazing customer experience, whether they're online or in store or buying something from a marketplace or from a first party, we wanna make
Colin:sure that experience is seamless, that it is the same, and we have customers become raving fans of us. That is something that's really exciting, and that'll keep them coming back. The bit that I find really fascinating that is, let's say somebody's ordering online, maybe it's through the marketplace aspect of the business, and they say, I wanna pick up. And that's kind of like the genius bit of what you're doing because, hey, you might wanna pick it up because maybe the size is too big. I wanna put it in the back of the car or whatever.
Colin:Then, sure, I'll go into the store Yeah. And I'll pick up other stuff. So it's it's kind of like in in grocery, we call it a basket filler. Yeah. Probably my quite right phrase in this case, it's it's a car filler rather than
Joe:Yes. Yes. The house filler. I guess.
Colin:Now we're we're gonna shift gears because I think our audience wants to know the most important thing is, Joe. What's your favorite thing to do? What's what's favorite in the product range from the Lowe's range for your house? Oh. So I said this yesterday, but I'm gonna say
Joe:it again because it is my favorite. I love that people are trying to make part of their homes as a little bit of a sanctuary. So one of our great selling items, one of our top selling items, you know, depending on week over week, is a sauna. And I love that because it just shows that, again, we have that breadth of assortment. And so for me, I'm all about health and wellness and sometimes you need that Zen place and I love popping up in my sauna, spending twenty, thirty minutes decompressing your thoughts, you can't be on your phone.
Joe:It's actually a great way for you to kind of almost recharge your battery. But what I love is, you know, six months ago, we weren't selling things like that. And now we're selling these items and it's not a low ticket. Mean, these things are twenty three, twenty four, twenty five hundred dollars. It's a lot of money, but you're seeing that customer gravitate towards things like that, which again, if we had potentially bought that first party, we might not have put that in store.
Joe:We might not have put that online. So we're having great learnings just by kind of seeing things like that. But that's one of my new favorite categories is how can I turn my home into a little sanctuary so that I don't have to go someplace else, that my home really feels, like a total home place where I can just spend time, relax, recharge, and get ready for the day?
Colin:I think I should just stop the podcast and demo the line right now and order slowly.
Joe:I do think you should. You know where you
Colin:can go? Press progess.com.
Joe:Now
Colin:looking ahead, what are the key digital initiatives or innovations I'm always excited about for the near future? You've done the marketplace. So what I would
Joe:say is if I take it to the top level of what my initiative is, I am trying to remove any type of customer friction within that journey. So whether that's I landed on a PDP and I want to get something installed, I'm buying a vanity, I want to make sure that vanity is installed. That's not the case across the board with every single item. So what I want to do is create a seamless, frictionless experience where someone can say, utilizing our agent, Milo, to say, Oh, I know. Did little
Colin:on this close.
Joe:I did close, but I didn't say it. And they can actually utilize that to help them build whatever they want, fix whatever they want, create great inroads to product categories, get them delivered, and if they want, have a pro come in and install that for them or do it for them. So for me, I want to give time back to the customer. Overall, that is the goal for me. I want to make sure that things are in stock.
Joe:We have what the customer needs. They can get it when they want it. They can get it installed if they want it to and actually do everything they can to increase the value of their home, keep it maintained, and have an amazing experience. So to me, that is the goal. There are so many initiatives that kind of dovetail into that, but at its core, that is our mission, is I want to reduce clicks, I wanna increase customer satisfaction, and that is where my mind is at across the board.
Colin:Amen to that. One of my phrases along those lines is less for the friction juicers for they shall inherit the cash. Yes. Yep. Yes.
Colin:It drives me crazy even friction out there. But, Joey, you've caused a lot of friction with me as well because I know you wanted to use the word AI. Yes. So you my blessing to use the word AI. What initiatives are you using with AI over at Lowe's?
Colin:So, it's a two pronged approach. So one is we're using AI in store. So all of
Joe:our store associates. So say I I just started at Lowe's and I don't know everything about home improvement. There are 200,000 SKUs in a store, different types of sizing. And so that associate might not understand every single category, but we've given them a great AI tool that you can actually search any product. It will tell you where it is located.
Joe:They'll tell you what the best product is for what the customer is asking. So if they're saying, hey, what plant should I use that would actually do well outside as I'm redoing my front yard? If you're not from the garden center and if you don't know about plants or horticulturists, know, you're not going to know that, but you can use our Milo's Companion App that actually will tell you everything about that. And it's powered by AI from our great partnership with OpenAI, which is amazing. So that's for the store associates.
Joe:And then for the customers, we've got Milo, which is on our website, which is an amazing tool. You can ask it anything. How do I plant a raised flower bed? How do I paint my cabinets? How do I refresh my bathroom for under $500?
Joe:All of these great things, and we give product content linked to YouTube, linked to actual product. You can purchase all of them. And that is really exciting to me because, again, I'm removing that customer friction. Gone are the days of search little keyword terms. Now people are being conversational with what they wanna talk about.
Joe:And so we are really focusing in on how we're actually getting AI to help us. And then we're seeing, okay, what can we learn from that? What are the things that are exciting to customers? How can we offer more of what customers are asking for? So instead of going in and saying, well, we think we have propensity models that might know what you want, we're asking customers, what do you want?
Colin:There's really inversion there. You're this around. And customers
Joe:are like, we've got a an amazing conversion, almost four x. When people utilize our AI agent, Milo, people are converting at a higher rate. They're buying more product. And that just means that I'm able to offer them a service. And while, yes, I wanna sell more product, if you can have a one cart checkout versus going to three different websites, I'm saving you time.
Joe:I'm saving you energy. I'm saving you effort. And hopefully, I'm creating a great loyal customer that will keep coming back
Colin:to us. I think they should just call it Joe and call it Willy, he'll call it Joe for you. He's done all the data. You got all of the
Joe:data.
Colin:With a new Milo, It's a it's a potential promotion for you. Yes. I love it. Thank you so much. For our audience who are made of brands, retailers, and and people who like marketplaces, what's top three things that our listeners should think about when rolling out a marketplace and rolling out a retail media strategy?
Colin:Yeah. So I would say one, I'm focusing on the customer. What does the customer want? What does that customer intent? As we looked at kind of launching a marketplace, which is a great way to do an endless aisle,
Joe:we took a look at search queries where maybe we didn't have the best experience. Said, okay, we need to be going into some of these categories. Here's where we need to go in. Also getting the entire organization aligned to this is a new way of doing business. This is a new business model.
Joe:No longer will there be a merchant going to a vendor saying, I want this exact product and only this product. So there is some healthy tension there because we are adding in things that our buyers may be passed on, but that maybe some customers in different states and in different climates and in different areas would actually want to go. So that's probably the biggest thing is, you know, looking at the data and seeing what customers want, but also getting your company aligned that there's going to be some gray area. It's not going to be kind of the same tried and true kind of retailer experience that they were used to and getting everybody comfortable with living in that gray uncomfortable area. That can be tough for a big organization like Lowe's.
Joe:You've been in business for over one hundred years. You've got amazing merchants. You've amazing teams that have great knowledge. And so this is a way for us to kind of counterpult it forward. Now, alongside that, when you've got more product and you've got great product, there's so much more to sell.
Joe:There's so much more media that you actually can do and showcase. And that's really where the magic happens is you've got great core product, which we know we're actually going to market to. And we got this great addition product that it might not sell as much as some of that core, but it's exciting. It might bring them in. And that's what is really exciting about the media part is that there's so much opportunity to sell into these great, amazing product assortments that span from higher price point, from lower price point, looking at a good, better, best.
Joe:And again, because there is so much stuff out there, if you can help use media to curate some of those of those arrays, some of those queries that we have through media, that is just, it's a perfect, way to kind of showcase the customers how they can get whatever they want at Lowe's. That's a spectacular answer. I just need
Colin:to check the app here to find out where my, result is being delivered. You know what? Yes. We will make sure.
Joe:I will make sure that it gets It's partially. I will personally make sure. I I won't install it for you, but I'll make sure that
Colin:you get it. Joe Cannell, SVP, digital, and ecommerce for Lowe's. Thank you very much for an amazing podcast, all your insights, and all your passion for it. Thank you so much for having me.