NYC's First 'Urban-Concept' Lowe's: Less Refrigerators, More Bike Storage Solutions

Racked is no longer publishing. Thank you to everyone who read our work over the years. The archives will remain available here; for new stories, head over to Vox.com, where our staff is covering consumer culture for The Goods by Vox. You can also see what we’re up to by signing up here.

Things that New Yorker's don't need: Patio furniture, grills, washing machines, roofing, and a whole lot more of what you'd expect to find at a typical Lowe's hardware store. So for its first-ever "urban-concept" store, which opened to the public this week on the corner of Broadway and West 68th Street, the company pared down their offerings to what city dwellers really need for their teeny tiny homes.

New York Daily News took a look inside the 30,000-square foot store (about a quarter of the size of their typical format) to find items like fold-up mops and brooms, a bathroom vanity that measures less than 18 inches across, tiny stoves, organization solutions, and "an entire section devoted to bike storage." The store seems to have borrowed from Apple's retail model of mobile checkout, too, with sales associates able to swipe credit cards and print receipts from pocket-sized devices rather than a typical register setup.

For the more labor-intensive home improvement projects, customers can meet with experts who will guide them through the "Endless Aisle" monitor with countless options of tiling, blinds, and light fixtures that can be delivered as soon as same-day. Bulky appliances get the same kind of treatment: There may be just a few refrigerator models that you can see and touch, but a seven-foot screen nearby allows for close-up virtual inspection of everything in their inventory.

And, of course, Lowe's needed a way to capture the millennials, and that comes in the form of "hip appliances like retro Smeg refrigerators and toasters in chic shades of pink, green and blue, or cute Madison Avenue-based Joseph Joseph paper towel holders and dish-soap dispensers that are small and stylish," the paper writes. ""If you live in a studio or one-bedroom, everything is out in the open," spokesman Michael Ricciardi explained, "so you want your appliances to have style and color."

Expect pretty much the exact same merchandise and features in Lowe's next "urban-concept" store when it bows in Chelsea next month.