How Lowe’s Marketplace & AI Strategy Are Accelerating Omnichannel Growth | Joe Cano at Mirakl Summit

Hello, everyone.

This is Omnitalk Retail.

I'm Chris Walton.

And I'm Anne Mazinga.

And we are coming to you once again live from the Miracle Summit at Brookfield Place in New York City.

And the energy's still hopping in here.

We're about to turn it up.

I think we're about to turn up the heat in here, Ann, because it's not hot enough outside.

We got to get it hotter in here.

No.

And to help us do that, I would like to introduce Joe Cano, the SVP of digital at Lowe's.

Joe, thanks for joining us today.

Thank you for having me.

I'm very excited to be here.

Yeah, right.

Especially excited to be inside.

Yes, right.

No doubt.

Well, Joe, let's start by giving our audience a little bit of your background because you've worked at some really incredible places and now leading digital at Lowe's.

Yeah, so I'm about six months new to Lowe's.

Before that, I was at Zappos, an Amazon company, kind of running marketing and merchandising there.

I was also at Walmart and general merchandising.

Also worked@jet.com before that, I was at Saks Fifth Avenue off Fifth Gilt, Hot Topic, Wet Seal, R and B, you name it, I've worked there.

Always.

Yes, always.

Longtime retailer, love retail because there's something new every single day, but always have been akin to the digital space.

So amazing.

Well, we're excited to have you.

Thank you.

Yeah, it's great.

So, Joe, so, you know, you.

Lowe's announced their marketplace.

I think that they were going to do a marketplace, like back in December.

I want to get my dates right here.

And just a few weeks ago, you announced the launch of the Miracle powered launch.

Miracle is powering that marketplace as well.

Why was, of all things at Lowe's, you know, from your vantage point, in the six months you've been enrolled, why was.

Why was the marketplace prioritized?

Yeah, so I think overall, we always search for the customer.

We always look that customer lens.

You want to make sure that we have the best assortment.

You want to have a focus on the total home strategy, to have everything for the home.

And so for us, it was really making sure that we were offering everything we could for that customer.

So whether that's price point, whether that was categories, whether that was categories, maybe we weren't in that.

We wanted to get into and test and learn.

Yeah, for me, that was like the paramount to say, if our customers are searching for it, we should be able to offer that for them.

And how do you think the marketplace will accelerate the online business?

The overall omnichannel business, really not the online business, but the omnichannel business.

I mean, omnichannel is huge.

So again, we are such a great brick and mortar store.

We have an amazing red vest associate popular.

What we really wanted to do is be able to empower those associates in store to also sell this marketplace items online.

And so for us, again, it was just saying, hey, I want this item.

It might not be in that store, but I can get that online.

So omni channel selling is huge for us.

So give me a little insight into what that experience looks like for me as a Lowe's customer.

I mean, I'm going to the Lowe's website.

How do I come across some of these, these marketplace providers from kind of both the DIY customer and I'm curious from the pro side too?

Yeah.

So from a customer lens, you're not going to really see any difference.

That's what we wanted.

We want it to be a seamless, easy to use experience.

So whether it's coming from a 3P, like a marketplace or a 1P, we wanted that PDP to look the same, to give you the right information and actually make it look like it's all coming from the same place.

Okay.

And so for us, that was paramount to actually launching.

Yeah.

Wow.

So no difference.

No difference.

Looking for bathroom remodels.

And I could see if you're looking.

For a bathroom remodel, we got faucets now that are like.

I mean, one of our top selling faucets was like a thirteen hundred dollar faucet.

And we're like, right.

Do we think we could sell that?

I don't know, but we actually can.

We have that customer, which is great.

And then they pick, they can ship.

It to their house, ship it directly to home.

Okay.

And it's again, seamless experience.

Wow.

Yeah, it's like that.

It reminds me of that first time I sold that first $5,000 couch on Target.com.

people are like, what?

I was like, yeah, don't you just feel good about stuff like that?

To that point?

I'm curious what has been your biggest surprise in understanding the DIY customer and how they gravitate towards a marketplace thus far.

Yeah.

So I think overall customers are just really kind of out there searching and they trust Lowe's as a great home improvement retailer.

And so for us, it was like, how much more could we actually get to be in that total home?

And so one thing that was a really Surprise for me, and I bought this myself, is we sold a $2,300 sauna.

And if you don't have a sauna, you need to buy a sauna because they are absolutely amazing.

And so if you would have asked me, a merchant five years ago, hey, we should sell saunas on Lowe's.com they probably would have looked at you and said, absolutely not.

Yeah.

But now we're actually being able to utilize all of that great data that we have and it's just, it's an amazing story for us.

That's a steal of a deal.

It's a steal of a deal.

It's in the consideration set.

Definitely a consideration set.

Oh, my gosh.

Well, one of the things that is a hot topic right now in the retail industry because of the revenue that can come from something like it are retail media networks.

Yes.

How does the marketplace kind of strategy merge with the retail media strategy?

Like, where is that going to go?

Oh, yes.

So it is fully merging.

So, okay, what we're looking at from bringing on our marketplace sellers, they're coming to us saying, we want to spend money in advertising, we want to promote our items because there's some of them are maybe a brand that they don't know, the customers don't understand, but they trust Lowe's.

So if we can help kind of sponsor some of those ads, whether that's online, whether that's off, offline.

So working directly with our media group to make sure we actually can promote that and actually working with miracle on seeing what we can do with them for those wonderful miracle ads that we're going to hopefully be selling soon.

Yes.

All in one spot, I think is amazing.

Yeah.

The one plus one dynamic, one plus one equals three dynamic of retail media and marketplaces is just unparalleled.

It's huge.

All right, well, let's get you out of here on this.

So kind of a two part question to leave on.

Okay.

We've been asking everybody.

So the theme of the conference is accelerate, Joe, as you know.

So first question is, how do you want to accelerate your growth in the marketplace via retail media?

That's number one.

And then number two, how are you looking at AI to accelerate your marketplace growth as well?

Okay, so first question, great question, by the way.

Self service that I think is huge because people want to be, especially as a seller, they want to be able to say, okay, is this working?

Is this sponsored ad working?

Are these products working?

Can I bump this up?

Can I reinvest?

That I think is great.

And we want our sellers to be able to be the driver of their own business.

And we also want to help these sellers.

Right.

If they can sell more through media.

That's amazing.

Yeah.

So that's exactly what we want to do.

Two, with AI.

That is going to be a huge.

We're utilizing AI in so many different ways.

Okay.

One, customers.

So we have Milo, which is a great platform.

It's right on our lowe's.com you can search anything from.

And I did this.

I'm like, how do I paint my cabinets?

It gave me the paint, it gave me the primer, the color that I could purchase right then and there, which also includes 3P items, which is amazing.

Yeah.

And then in store we have Milo's companion app, which can make you, let's just say, an expert into any aisle.

So we work in stores sometimes as executives and so I don't know everything from rough plumbing, but I can go on the app and say, what is the best PVC pipe for X, Y and Z?

I can go and ask that question and AI will help me guide that customer and give me that knowledge.

So again, it's knowledge sharing.

We want to be the most helpful, value driven home improvement retailer out there.

And both of those really help it.

Yeah.

And to your point, like then.

And that item may or may not be in the Lowe's store as well.

And you can just get it on Lowe's dot com.

Exactly.

My other question for you is did you paint the cabinets and what color were they?

Okay, so ended up not painting the cabinets.

I wrapped my cabinets, which that is a really fun Trend finding on TikTok.

Oh my God.

So I have a nice little maple wrapped cabinet now.

So instead of actually buying new ones, I was able to really reuse that, not use waste.

So for me, that was a very exciting.

I'll show you pictures after.

Oh my God.

Yeah, I want to see that.

We'll have to post them for our listeners.

Thank you so much, Joe.

This is what been so insightful.

I really appreciate your time.

Thanks again to Miracle for having us here.

Getting to interview great people all day.

Stay tuned and until next time, be careful out there.