Lowe’s announced this week that it’s integrated its third-party marketplace directly into My Red Vest — the software Lowe’s associates use in stores to place orders for customers. With the integration, associates can now search marketplace products alongside Lowe’s own inventory and complete a purchase right at the counter, with the item shipped to the customer’s home.
The rollout is already at 97% of Lowe’s 1,700-plus stores and will reach chain-wide within weeks. It was unveiled at Lowe’s second annual seller summit in Chicago.
On its face, this is a software update. Read more closely, it’s a strategic answer to one of the oldest problems in physical retail: a store can only carry what fits on its shelves, but customers want everything.
What Just Changed at the Counter
Before this integration, the marketplace existed primarily as an online experience — customers could buy from third-party sellers on Lowes.com, but associates in stores couldn’t easily search the expanded catalog or transact those items for in-store shoppers. The wall between “what we have here” and “what’s online” was real, even when it didn’t need to be.
The My Red Vest integration knocks that wall down. An associate helping a customer who needs an above-ground pool — a category that’s hard to stock at scale in a typical store footprint — can now pull up thousands of marketplace options, complete the purchase in the same flow as a stocked item, and have it shipped to the customer’s house. Same for decorative geese, which are having a viral social moment and which Lowe’s doesn’t carry in stores. Same for the long tail of products customers ask for but stores can’t realistically inventory.
Lowe’s VP of marketplace Michael McCluskey framed the design philosophy directly: “Customers don’t see it in terms of 1P or 3P. They’re just looking for the right solution for whatever project or problem that they have.”
That’s the right read. From a shopper’s perspective, the source of inventory is invisible. What matters is whether the store can solve their problem.
A Broader Marketplace Push
Lowe’s launched its third-party marketplace in late 2024. Since then, the company says it has more than doubled its marketplace assortment and is adding tens of thousands of new items every week. The marketplace remains invite-only — a quality-control move that keeps the catalog from becoming the chaos that has plagued some other retailer marketplaces.
It’s also growing fast enough to matter to the financial story. Lowe’s reported in May that its first-quarter online sales rose 15.5%, with the marketplace as a meaningful contributor.
There are two other strategic threads worth noting. First, the marketplace is becoming an important channel for professional customers, who often buy in larger quantities and have shown up in marketplace orders for products like air conditioners and bulk building materials. That aligns with CEO Marvin Ellison’s broader Pro push — he said earlier this month that Lowe’s Pro penetration is “approaching 40%,” up from 18% in 2018.
Second, marketplace data is feeding Lowe’s merchandising decisions. McCluskey said EV chargers are one category that’s gained traction through the marketplace despite a small in-store footprint today — exactly the kind of signal that could earn shelf space tomorrow. Lowe’s is also using its marketplace relationship with Stanley Black & Decker to test demand for Black & Decker products that aren’t currently stocked.
“We could see this as a feeder into: ‘Hey, marketplace seller, this has done really well for us, we’d like to work with you as well on a wholesale basis,'” McCluskey said.
In other words, the marketplace isn’t just an endless aisle — it’s a real-time demand-signal system for what should eventually live on the actual aisle.
What It Means
For hardware and home improvement retailers across the industry, the My Red Vest integration is worth thinking through carefully. A few angles:
- The endless-aisle bar is rising. Every retailer faces the same physics problem: the customer wants more than what fits in the store. Lowe’s is now answering that with a tightly integrated marketplace at the counter. Walmart is testing QR-code marketplace activations. Other retailers will follow. The bar for what “we don’t carry that, but we can get it” looks like is shifting.
- Independents have a parallel toolset. The cooperatives — Ace, Do It Best, True Value — have run sophisticated special-order, drop-ship, and warehouse-fulfillment programs for years. The strategic question for independents isn’t whether to compete on assortment breadth (they already do, through their co-ops), but whether the technology and counter experience match what customers are increasingly expecting. The frictionless “find it, order it, ship it” flow Lowe’s is operationalizing is what raises the standard.
- Marketplace data is a merchandising tool. Lowe’s is treating its third-party catalog as a demand-signal layer for stocking decisions. Any retailer with access to special-order data, vendor catalog activity, or out-of-stock tracking has a version of this insight available — and very few are using it systematically.
- The Pro customer keeps gaining strategic weight. Bulk marketplace orders from professional customers is a reminder of where the strategic energy is going across the industry. The retailer who serves the Pro well — chain or independent — wins disproportionately in this market.
The Bigger Picture
The shift Lowe’s is making isn’t really about decorative geese, even if that’s the fun headline. It’s about closing the gap between “what the store has” and “what the customer wants” — and using technology to make that gap invisible at the point of sale.
That’s a strategic move with implications well beyond any one product category. For retailers across the industry, the message is the same: the physical aisle is no longer the boundary of what you can sell. The retailers who design the smoothest experience across that boundary — in-store help plus online catalog plus delivery — are going to be in the strongest position over the next several years.
McCluskey’s closing line summed it up: “This is not a side project at Lowe’s. This has become increasingly core to our digital strategy.”
Worth taking seriously.
Source: Modern Retail, June 2026.
