Sales of lumber and building supplies are a larger part of sales at Lowe’s than they are at arch-rival competitor Home Depot. Taken together they represent the best selling products at the DIY chain.
A new analysis of sales by product categories at the country’s second biggest home improvement chain, Lowe’s, shows that lumber and related building suppliers are its single largest product classification.
This compares with a similar look at the numbers from Home Depot, which show lumber is its number four category, although its overall revenues are higher given Depot’s larger size.
Direct comparisons are a little deceiving since Lowe’s had been combining lumber and building supplies over much of the past decade but split them out more recently. Ten years ago lumber and building supplies represented $6.6 billion in sales at Lowe’s and today they are $14.6 billion, having more than doubled. Lumber sales by themselves represent $9.5 billion, behind only appliances, of the retailer’s total revenues, which were $97 billion for its 2022 fiscal year. At Home Depot, where total company sales were $157 billion for the same period, lumber was its fourth largest category at $13.4 billion in annual sales.
Taken together, the two giant DIY retailers represent $22.9 billion in annual sales of lumber.
