Lowe’s, the nationwide chain of handyman havens, is planning a new tool for the do-it-yourself consumer: an iPhone app able to store your home’s layout along with all the items needed for that weekend project. Meanwhile, 42,000 Lowe employees will get iPhone 4s enabling them to take customer orders and answer questions.
The MyLowe’s app, set to be available in October, will let customers “monitor transactions, create room-by-room profiles of their homes and plan projects with store employees,” Bloomberg reports. Each store will receive about 25 iPhone 4s, which will replace the traditional scanners.
Although the move is meant to keep up with home-improvement leader Home Depot, the introduction of iPhones is more than usual competition. “Forget about the competition, we are playing catch-up with the customer psyche,” Lowe’s Chief Information Officer, Mike Brown, told the news site.
In 2010, Home Depot spent $60 million on handheld devices from Motorola and the creation of the MyHomeDepot.com site. To keep up with the flood of Lowe’s customers prowling with iPhones and iPod touch’s the company plans to upgrade its stores, bolstering the available bandwidth and introducing Wi-Fi.