Lowe's is becoming a smaller Wal-Mart [View All]

[jmowreader]

The current CEO of Lowe's is Bob Tillman. In January, he will step down and Bob Niblock, who's currently president of Lowe's, will replace him at the head.

Niblock has already implemented his first big initiative: New Lower Prices, or NLP. Here's how it works, according to Home Channel News:

* Prices will be lowered on all products when practicable. Lowe's can request a price be lowered at any time.

* The only justification for a price increase is an increase in the price of raw materials; even if a raw material goes up in price, a price increase will not automatically be approved.

* Any request for a price increase is likely to be answered by Lowe's conducting a "line review"--their crawling through each product your company sells to Lowe's with the intent of finding products Lowe's believes are overpriced and cutting the prices on those products. (Said a Lowe's spokesman, it's amazing how quickly those price-increase requests disappear when you do this.)

My district manager was in the store today. I showed him the article. After a few raised eyebrows and whistling, he muttered something about that being no way to run a railroad.