In making announcement this past Friday, Lowe's CEO Robert Niblock said the company was only about a month behind its original schedule for Canadian openings. The first three Canadian Lowe's outlets will be opened in Brampton, Hamilton and Brantford. Three additional Lowe's stores are scheduled to open in the GTA by year's end:  Castlefield Rd. and Caledonia Ave.; Newmarket/East Gwillimbury; and another outlet in the fast-growing community of north Brampton.

A seventh store is planned for Maple and another 15 are in the planning stages, Niblock said.

Don Stallings, an American who was named president of Lowe's Canada this past August, said consumers would find a greater selection of high-end appliances, including Miele products, than those currently being offered in the stores of competitors like Home Depot Canada. Canadian consumers were "more discerning" than their American counterparts, he said.

Lowe's announced that its Canadian stores will have an average 117,000 square foot size, plus 30,000 additional square feet allocated to garden centres. About 35 per cent of products will be sourced from Canadian suppliers.

Niblock and Stallings admitted that their traditional rivalry with Home Depot, Lowe's largest competitor in the U.S., will continue north of the border. Home Depot stores outnumber Lowe's 2,200 to 1,400 in the U.S. In Canada, Lowe's will also feel pressure from Rona, Canadian Tire, and Home Hardware which, along with Home Depot Canada, currently control about 60 per cent of the Canadian home improvement market.

Home Depot operates 157 stores in Canada, with 23 of them located in the GTA. According to Hardlines Newsletter, a premier source for information on home improvement retailing in Canada, even if Lowe's opened up to 20 new stores annually, it could take the company nearly a decade to catch up to its main competitors.

Lowe's reported US$46.9 billion in sales, and a $3.1 billion profit last year. Home Depot, at nearly twice the size of it main rival, posted 2006 sales of $90.8 billion and $5.8 billion in profit. Ironically, Lowe's had a 30-year head start on Home Depot, starting as a single hardware store in Wilkesboro, North Carolina, but not beginning any real expansion until 1994, the same year Stallings joined the company.

In a statement released earlier this week, Rona's chief financial officer, Claude Guévin said the market for warehouse-style home improvement stores is nearly saturated in Canada, suggesting a smaller-store format is the way of the future for his company.

"It's extremely difficult today to have really good service in a really big-box store," Guévin said.