Lowe’s Companies Inc, in a statement on Monday, has stated its decision to close its 51 stores in North America. All the closing stores have been declared as underperforming by the company. And Lowe, heading towards its business strategy of continuous restructuring process, has decided to close such stores. Out of 51 closing stores, 20 stores are closing in United States while 31 stores in Canada.
Founded in 1946, Lowe is Mooresville, North Carolina based chain of home improvement stores also enlisted by Fortune 50. Every week in United Sates, Mexico and Canada, its stores serve about 18 million customers. Lowe made sales of $68.6 billion in fiscal year of 2017, with over 310,000 employees in chain of more than 2,390 of its home improvement and hardware stores.
Since his appointment as CEO in May this year, Marvin Ellison, has made several bold decisions to Lowe main strategic policies. Cutting back the products lines and removal of positions like chief operating officer and chief customer officer from its organizational chart are the other hard decisions planned by Lowe under Ellison’s management. From the beginning in Lowe, Ellison despite being afraid excel by performing swiftly and with determination to make the Lowe more competitive.
Earlier in August, Lowe’ also announced that by Feb 2019, it will close 99 stores and a distribution center, of its subsidiary Orchard Supply Hardware, in California, Florida and Oregon. The announcement was made after 5 years of acquisition of the bankrupting Orchard Supply Hardware by Lowe in a deal worth $205 million. The decision was made due to undersized portion of the Orchard yearly sale adding merely the 1 percent towards total yearly sales of Lowe.
And now the 51 stores closing are mostly comprised of Rona, a biggest chain of home improvement store of Canada acquired by Lowe in 2016 for worth $2 billion. Rona to 40 stores of Lowe in Canada added 700 stores. Total 27 of Rona stores will be closed in Canada which includes nine in Quebec and Ontario each, six in Newfoundland and Labrador together, two in Alberta and one in British Columbia.
