Using Lowe’s Hidden Clearance for Amazon Arbitrage Success

In this article we’re going to talk about Hidden Clearance at Lowe’s – and more specifically, how to find discounted products at Lowe’s to maximise the profit of your Amazon arbitrage business.

What do we mean by Hidden Clearance?

“Hidden Clearance” refers to a method of discounting whereby a retailer marks up a product at the RRP, but the product is actually for sale at a lower price. Therefore, the only way you’ll know about the discount is if you have an app or access to the retailer’s online store. The best example of a hidden clearance operation is Walmart, where they will mark down end of line stock or products that haven’t sold as quickly as they thought, but will only make these marked down prices visible in the app or online.

Lowe’s doesn’t do a hidden clearance section in the same way, and therefore it’s not possible to take advantage of hidden prices – the price you see at Lowe’s is the price you pay (not considering coupons or other discounts that might not be factored into the sticker price).

However, this isn’t to say that Lowe’s isn’t a fantastic place to look for inventory for your Amazon arbitrage business – like other retailers, Lowe’s will frequently mark down products to well below RRP, giving you as a reseller a large potential profit margin.

Finding profitable products at Lowe’s with SourceMogul

SourceMogul offers you the ability to view hundreds of retailers like Lowe’s for discounted or clearance products. You can also filter by specific retailers, meaning you can quite easily only search for products available at Lowe’s.

Once you’ve completed your product search, you can then filter by category, view the product’s sales rank and supplier data as well as how quickly the item sells. You can also factor in other discounts and coupons to ensure that the price SourceMogul is presenting you with is the price you’ll actually pay, so that it will show you a more accurate potential profit margin.

We’ve written a very comprehensive guide to Amazon retail arbitrage which is applicable to all the retailers we compare, including Lowe’s, which will give you all the information you’ll ever need to make your retail arbitrage business a success.

The best products to purchase at Lowe’s for reselling on Amazon

Lowe’s sells a lot of bulky and expensive items, which may give you a decent profit margin when you come to resell on Amazon but can often be expensive to ship. However, Lowe’s can be great for specific product types which we go into below. This doesn’t mean these are the only things you should buy at Lowe’s – ultimately the best product to purchase anywhere is the one you can make the most profit out of.

Home Decor

Home Decor is one of Lowe’s specialities and they stock a huge range of furniture items, storage solutions, living and bedroom furniture, rugs and other soft furnishings. All of this has the potential to generate profit for your arbitrage business as long as you can find a good deal, as it’s generally pretty easy to ship these items to Amazon using FBA.

Small appliances

Lowe’s sells a wide array of small appliances such as coffee machines, food processors, indoor grills, blenders, microwaves and toasters. There’s definitely profit potential in these items if you can get hold of them at a discounted cost as they’re easy to ship and always in high demand.

Lawn and garden

Lawn and garden is definitely a seasonal category but if you spot the right product at the right price at the right time, it can be quite profitable. Lowe’s carries an extensive range of lawn and garden products. For example, at the time of writing we found a SunCast Hose Reel in beige available at Lowe’s for $59, but was selling on Amazon for $74, giving a potential profit margin of $15.

How to further increase your profitability

Online Only Deals

Lowe’s has a section on their website titled “online only deals” which includes products that have been marked down considerably and are only sold online. For example, when we looked, we found a Samsung countertop microwave at $179. It was available on Amazon at $229, leaving a potential profit margin of $50 before shipping and Amazon seller fees.

Online-only deals at Lowe’s tend to expire within a few days and usually offer decent savings. However, SourceMogul should pick these up for you when you do a search so you won’t have to worry about trying to identify them yourself. It would be worth keeping an eye on the online-only deals page and running searches as often as you can to ensure you keep up-to-date with what’s being offered and how much profit potential is in these items.

Deal of the Day

Lowe’s also runs a deal of the day promotion, where a specific group of items will be discounted only for one day. These products could be literally anything – at the time of writing we saw headphones, chainsaws, a chest freezer and even cube storage organisers. Be aware that these deals don’t last long and if you leave it too late, they’ll likely be full price again and you will have lost your arbitrage opportunity.

Coupons

Lowe’s, like nearly every large retailer, does coupons. We’d recommend installing a browser extension that can automatically identify coupon codes and test them out for you – you never know if there’s a valid coupon code out there for the item you’re trying to buy which could increase your profit margin significantly.

Lowe’s Hidden Clearance FAQs

What day does Lowe’s mark down products?

In-store, Lowe’s usually marks down products on a Thursday. They produce something called a markdown report and it’s possible to get hold of this report by asking customer services in-store to see which items have been marked down.

However – this isn’t relevant to online arbitrage. Lowe’s will mark down products on their website as and when they want to, so don’t rely on discounts happening on a particular day. Use SourceMogul to identify your discounted products, and you won’t need to worry about this – the tool will pull out the best possible deal at the time of searching.

Will Lowe’s do price matching?

Lowe’s will price match for items found both in-store and online. This can be useful when trying to squeeze some more profit out of an item as if you for example have a coupon, or you want to use your Lowe’s credit card to get 5% off, it’s possible that you can get an item slightly cheaper if you can get Lowe’s to match a lower price somewhere else and then get your discount in addition to that.

What other stores should I consider besides Lowe’s?

The only store with a true “hidden clearance” section is Walmart. However, that doesn’t mean that there’s no opportunity to find heavily discounted products for online arbitrage at other stores. You should be looking at Walmart, Target, Home Depot, Sam’s Club – all of which you can instantly compare prices and find the best deals for OA using the SourceMogul app.

Conclusion

To conclude, while they may not offer a traditional “hidden clearance” section as Walmart does, Lowe’s is a great place to look for discounts and offers to build up your online arbitrage inventory as cheaply as possible. However, you will need a product sourcing solution. SourceMogul, as we’ve demonstrated, will help you find the best deals at Lowe’s and will instantly tell you exactly what your expected profit margin is when selling the item on Amazon.

We offer a 7 day, no obligation free trial of the software which you can access using the link below.