If you are like me, either too stubborn to ask for help, or find it difficult to ask for assistance due to social anxieties, and you also happen to be shopping at Lowe’s in the near future, then this guide is for you. In the age of technology, more and more retail locations are making it easier to shop in-store with the help of online catalogs which customers can either order items for pickup, delivery, or just to see if a particular item is available in store. Some stores even have online, or in app, store maps which show where certain products are located, given that the item in question is something that is carried in store. If you are someone like me, then you usually want to see the item in person before making a purchase. Being able to actually get a feel for the product and understanding size and what it looks like will usually help guide a purchase.
However, there are times when you know what you want and you just don’t want to have to wait for it. So you check the company’s website, find that a local location has the item, but the item location doesn’t seem very self explanatory. I’ve run into this problem a few times shopping at Lowe’s. Yes, they show what aisle and what bay an item is located in, but Lowe’s, unlike Home Depot, does not provide consumers with a layout of their local store. Instead, you must rely on hanging signs and the assistance from store associates. I used to work in retail and I can understand not wanting to ask for help at first because, let’s face it, we are all stubborn in our own ways. For me, when I go to a store and cannot immediately find an item I need, I usually spend about a half hour walking around aimlessly until I cave in and ask for help.
Before writing this post, I actually experienced this while trying to find a garden torch for killing weeds. I looked up on my phone to see if the store nearest me actually had the item first.
Alright, excellent, my store has it available. Though, I was a little perplexed by the aisle and bay numbers. I didn’t know exactly what N stood for, but I was confident that I could figure it out quickly on my own. I can now say that I was completely wrong.
I made it to the store and began my search. I tried to figure out where this item could be located by grouping it together with other items. I searched those logical areas, then made my way out to the garden center. Still no results. I was just about to find someone to ask for help when I figured that I would do at least one more pass through an aisle I had already been down. Sure enough, there it was. However, it was not in an aisle bay, rather, it was hanging up on a clip strip (explained further down) close to the end of the aisle. This isn’t the first time I had to go on a wild goose chase for an item but, with a little research, I’ve been able to create a short guide to not only help myself on future excursions, but you, the reader and potential customer, as well.
As was shown on the previous picture, the torch I was looking for was in strange location.
The aisle, instead of being a plain number, had the letter “N” in front of it. From what I’ve experienced and was able to gather, these letters usually indicate that the product is hanging on a piece of equipment known as a Clip Strip (pictured below).
A Clip Strip is usually used to help attach other items, usually similar or complimentary, to product in the aisles they are hung up in. In short, they entice the buyer to buy more and spend more. From what I have looked into, Clip Strip locations usually only start with the letter “N” but it is possible that Lowe’s uses other single letters as well to identify them. So, if you are looking for an item that is listed as such, try checking the ends or centers of aisles with similar products.
You may run into a few products that are listed as being in the aisle “GC04” or “GCSW”. These two locations are located together in the same department; which is the store’s Garden Center. However, they are both still separate areas.
If you are looking for an item that is located in “GC”, followed by a number, that means the specific product is in one of the tall outdoor aisles in the Garden Center. Usually, mulch, stones, and other soils or big bag products are located here.
If the location does not have a number, and instead is formatted as “GCSW”, that means the product is located on the side wall, the only solid wall against the building, in the Garden Center.
This last piece took me some time to fully figure out, but once you start seeing these locations in-store, it becomes a little bit clearer. In some cases, items are displayed in multiple locations. This could mean they have a home in a main aisle, are faced on an end-cap of an aisle, and/or are displayed in bin or shipper (example shown below).
If you find that an item has multiple numbers, or a bay location that starts with a letter, then use the information below to help decipher what these two mean.
Aisles with multiple numbers usually indicate that an item can be found in multiple locations. For this particular item, it can be found in aisles 13 and 14. If a number is duplicated, this usually means that it is in another bay in the same aisle, or it is displayed on one of the end-caps, which faces the main walkway in the store.
If the bay starts with a letter, lie “A13”, this means, from what I have experienced in store, that the product can be found in a cardboard shipper or promotional bin. Most of the time, smoke alarms and various electronics are displayed as such, since they tend to be more common necessity items.
It may be short, but I know that this guide will help others as it has helped me. Lowe’s is a great place to go for hardware and home improvement needs. Though, until they create a feature allowing shoppers to view product locations on a map, this guide can be used to help clear up some confusion about in-store locations, making your next shopping trip one that is hopefully hassle free.
(This guide, or I, am in no way affiliated with, or endorsed by Lowe’s. This is purely recreational and was created to help improve the shopping experiences of other shoppers.)
