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Home Depot and Lowe’s are known for being a one-stop destination for do-it-yourself projects. But in recent years, they’ve both expanded into a different kind of home improvement: “soft DIY.”
Experts say the expansion into this category — from vases and decorative pillows to artificial flowers and candles — shows a shift in how people are managing their homes, where they are freshening up the house instead of renovating or rebuilding.
Even as the latest quarterly earnings reports indicate overall home improvement sales have slowed down, “decor” has been one of the fastest growing categories at both companies since 2017, according to a CNN analysis of SEC data.
Decor sales were steadily growing at Home Depot and Lowe’s prior to the Covid-19 pandemic, but experts say the lockdown months spurred a surge in interest both in redoing kitchens and throwing in additional decor items, such as a fruit basket or throw blankets.
“Traditionally [decor] is where they underperformed somewhat. People would go there for hard products,” according to retail expert Neil Saunders, the managing director at Global Data, referring to items such as building materials.
“But for the softer side of decoration, they would probably go to a general homewares retailer,” he said.
Home fashion doesn’t seem like the bread and butter of companies like Home Depot and Lowe’s, unlike items like tools and drywall, but it’s been making significant gains over the last six years. The SEC data analyzed by CNN shows that home decor sales have doubled at both Home Depot and Lowe’s in that time period.
While the “decor and storage” category remains the smallest percent share of Home Depot’s sales overall, it’s gained the most share since 2017, behind appliances.
Decor has grown as a category even more extensively at Lowe’s. In 2018, decor at both retailers consisted of 3.3% of net sales. By 2022, decor products accounted for 5.4% of Lowe’s sales – more than the tools, building materials, flooring or hardware categories.
“Our private brand product assortment has elevated our performance with the DIY customer, especially in Home Décor,” Lowe’s said in their 2022 SEC filing. The latest filing states that the company includes a complete line of decorating products in order to meet customers’ varying needs.
In their most recent annual SEC filing, Home Depot states: “Our industry is highly competitive, highly fragmented, and evolving.” As a result, the company says it faces competition from a variety of businesses, including home decor retailers.
Pandemic sales boost
The lockdown caused by Covid-19, which tanked travel and clothing sales, led to consumers using their spare cash on home improvement instead. In 2019, year-over-year net sales at Home Depot and Lowe’s grew by roughly 2% and 1%, respectively.