Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: FRIDAY, November 18, 1994 TAG: 9411180072
SECTION: CURRENT PAGE: NRV-1 EDITION: NEW RIVER VALLEY
SOURCE: STEPHEN FOSTER STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: CHRISTIANSBURG LENGTH: Medium
The doors opened this week on a 120,000-square-foot, 40,000-selection store.
It boasts a selection that includes Oriental rugs, televisions and stereos, lamps, a garden center and greenhouse, and the standard hardware fare of lumber, tools, paint and home repair knick-knacks.
The new store, on Peppers Ferry Road beside the Market Place shopping center, is three times as large as the old Lowe's on North Franklin Street, with almost triple the selection, and two to three times as many employees, estimated at 150-200.
You can buy a toilet for $140, or if you have a taste for luxury, pay for the top-of-the line $988 model. Sinks from $30 to more than $1,000. Telephones, cleaning liquids, entertainment centers, scented pine cones, you name it:
"They got everything here," said James Martin, who took time Thursday morning to stroll through the store with his wife, Edith. James Martin, from Radford, used to make cabinets, and has been a long-time shopper at the old Lowe's. He came to look around, and left with a bagful of light bulbs.
"I couldn't turn this down," he said, holding up the clear plastic bag. "I got 75 watts for 12 cents a piece." Plus, a free yard stick, key chain and shirt pocket full of pencils.
Cynthia Wright, a New River Community College student from Dublin, came to Christmas shop with her boyfriend. She left with a shopping cart full of gifts: a clock, a fan, a hang-on-the-wall thermometer, a bear that bubbles.
"It's bigger than we're used to," Wright said of the store. Though there's a Lowe's in Dublin, it's "about the size of the Christmas department" here.
The grand opening coincided with seven other Lowe's grand openings around the country. "It's the biggest day in our history," said Cinny Haynes, a spokeswoman with the Lowe's corporate headquarters in North Wilkesboro, N.C.
Founded in 1946, Lowe's operates 325 stores in 21 states, and has plans to open more than 100 over the next two years. More than half of those fall into Lowe's "large store" category of stores built after 1988. Those stores, on average, have sales more than 80 percent greater than the company's "small stores," generally those built before 1984. Ten years ago, customers were happy to choose from a section of six doorknobs. "Now they want 60," Haynes said.
Haynes said the prospect of a new Wal-Mart "superstore," a 200,000-square-foot operation to open across U.S. 460 next summer, is not a worry for Lowe's. While the two stores do have some product overlap, Haynes said, Lowe's views their roles as complementary. "Analysts put us in totally different industries," she said.
Joe Tucciarone, Lowe's manager, was moving about frantically Wednesday, the store's actual opening day. With honchos from corporate headquarters surveying the scene, an opening day several months earlier than expected (construction proceeded faster than planned), and an army of employees aided by helpers from nearby stores, there was plenty to oversee.
He expressed only optimism, though. "We have so much more and so much more to offer and in a better location," he said. "We're already swamped."
Following the sneak-peek opening Wednesday, the store's grand opening Thursday featured Miss Virginia, politicians, a wood carving demonstration and other pieces of pomp and circumstance.
by CNB