RELATED: Lowe’s Is Making This Major Change to Stores, Starting in February. Texas-based company Yeti just confirmed that it has decided to stop selling its products at Lowe’s, according to Retailwire. Some of its popular products currently sold at the retailer include premium coolers and tumblers. According to the news outlet, this news just a few years after the company began rolling out Yeti items to Lowe’s stores in late 2019. “Beyond the opportunity to intersect with additional consumers within home improvement, we were attracted to Lowe’s strong position in Pro, outdoor, and seasonal categories, areas that align with many of the pursuits that we support,” Yeti CEO Matt Reintjes said in Oct. 2019 when the partnership was first announced, per Retailwire. Yeti is moving away from selling its products in Lowe’s stores in an effort to focus on other sales areas. “As we have evaluated our growth areas, our focus and optimization mandate and the current supply constraints, we ultimately believe we can be more productive better serving our Yeti customers across our strong existing wholesale partnerships, our owned direct channels and our growing international opportunities,” Reintjes said during the earnings call. According to the CEO, Yeti’s direct channel sales have expanded to 60 percent of its sales from just 50 percent when it first partnered with Lowe’s, largely as a result of its own retail store expansion and accelerated e-commerce growth. And Yeti has reduced its independent wholesale footprint to just around 3,000 target accounts, which the company believes will help focus its efforts “on very high caliber retail and drive consistent, high-quality experiences for [its] customers.” RELATED: For more retail news delivered straight to your inbox, sign up for our daily newsletter. Lowe’s isn’t necessarily to blame for the move, according to Yeti. “To be clear, Lowe’s has been a great partner, and has worked closely with us as we have continuously experimented with how to best serve their customers and shopper patterns,” Reintjes said during a company earnings call on Feb. 17, per Retailwire.ae0fcc31ae342fd3a1346ebb1f342fcb Yeti said it is “winding down” its partnership with Lowe’s and with its inventory moving into other channels that appear to be thriving, the company doesn’t expect that it will face a material impact, MarketWatch reported. The company’s own retail stores are also becoming “a powerful and profitable force” for the brand, Reintjes said. You won’t have to necessarily go to a Yeti store to get Yeti products once its partnership with Lowe’s comes to an end. According to Capital.com, the company is planning to continue selling products at some of its more long-standing retail partners such as Bass Pro Shops and REI. “Ultimately, it came down to: We’re going to focus on building the strength of our existing wholesale partners that have been with us, that we had already kind of taken through the merchandising and the presentation and the cadence of how Yeti operates,” Reintjes said. RELATED: The One Thing You Should Never Buy at Lowe’s, Shopping Experts Warn.
