For years, the home improvement giants have been chasing the professional contractor. Pros spend more, shop more often, and tend to stick with whoever earns their loyalty. But Lowe’s just made it clear that the weekend warrior is squarely back in the spotlight. And the retailer’s growing stack of AI tools is a big reason why that bet is starting to pay off.
The Headline: AI That Moves the Needle
On its first-quarter 2026 earnings call, Lowe’s shared a number worth paying attention to. Customers who use Mylow, the retailer’s AI shopping assistant, convert online at three times the rate of customers who don’t. The tool is fielding more than a million customer questions every month.
That’s not a vanity metric. Conversion is the moment a browser becomes a buyer, and tripling it among AI users suggests the technology is doing real work, answering the “which product do I actually need” questions that often stall a DIY purchase before it happens. CEO Marvin Ellison framed it as evidence that a well-designed AI experience can genuinely drive the purchasing decision rather than just sit on the page as a gimmick.
The AI push isn’t only customer-facing. A companion tool built for store associates is tied to a 2% bump in in-store customer satisfaction scores when associates use it. The idea is to put better answers in the hands of the red-vest staff so the help on the floor is faster and sharper.
Why DIY, and Why Now
Lowe’s has spent a lot of recent energy courting pros, and that work is paying off. Contractor strength was a major contributor to the quarter’s solid results. But Ellison was direct about the bigger picture: the majority of Lowe’s customers are do-it-yourselfers, and the company sees that as something worth leaning into rather than treating as an afterthought.
He also called it early. This is described as a long-term play. Lowe’s is building relationships with DIY customers it expects to mature over years.
Appliances: The Omnichannel Showcase
One category putting up positive comparable sales is appliances, and it doubles as a case study in how Lowe’s wants the whole experience to work. The retailer is positioning itself as the go-to for urgent replacements, noting that roughly 7 in 10 appliances are bought under duress—the fridge died, and it needs to be fixed now.
The pitch is flexibility: research the appliance online, walk in and talk to a knowledgeable associate, then complete the purchase whatever way is most convenient. Lowe’s also says it’s the only retailer that can deliver and install a major appliance next-day in almost any U.S. ZIP code, which is a meaningful edge when the customer is operating on a broken-appliance deadline.
Loyalty and a Subscription Twist
AI and appliances are two legs of the strategy. The third is loyalty. Lowe’s is layering new DIY-focused features onto its MyLowe’s Rewards program, and in March it launched HomeCare+, a paid subscription that gives members two in-home visits a year for maintenance tasks like swapping an HVAC air filter or flushing a water heater.
It’s a notable move: rather than a one-time transaction, HomeCare+ uses the loyalty platform to build an ongoing, trust-based relationship with local associates the customer comes to know. For a DIY shopper who’s confident with some jobs but not all, a subscription that brings a trusted hand to the door is an easy sell.
The Numbers Behind It
The strategy is unfolding on steady financial footing. Comparable sales rose 0.6% year over year in the first quarter of 2026, and net sales climbed 10.3% to $23.1 billion.
What It Means
Lowe’s quarter offers a few clear signals for anyone in the hardware and home improvement business:
- AI is graduating from novelty to sales driver. A 3x conversion lift among assistant users is the kind of result that turns an AI experiment into a budget line. The lesson isn’t “add a chatbot”. It’s that AI pays off when it solves the specific friction that stalls a sale.
- The DIY customer is a relationship, not a transaction. Lowe’s is treating amateur project-doers as long-term customers worth nurturing through tools, loyalty perks, and services, serving as a reminder that smaller retailers’ natural strength in hands-on, personal help is exactly what the giants are now trying to engineer.
- Urgency is an opportunity. Most appliance purchases happen under pressure. Whoever makes the stressful replacement easiest wins that sale.
- Subscriptions are creeping into home improvement. HomeCare+ is worth watching as a test of whether recurring-revenue models can take root in a category long defined by one-off purchases.
For independent and mid-sized players, the through-line is encouraging. The trusted-advice, know-your-customer experience that Lowe’s is spending heavily to build with AI and subscriptions is something a good local hardware store already delivers across the counter. The challenge is matching the convenience—and the speed.
Source: CX Dive, “Lowe’s courts DIY shoppers as AI tools boost online conversions,” by Bryan Wassel, May 21, 2026.
