Lowe's Mylow hits 25 million questions as Home Depot's Magic Apron keeps pace

The two retailers have been running a quiet feature race since launching their assistants in the same week last year. Home Depot's August addition of localized store knowledge and Lowe's same-month launch of Mylow Memory are the latest examples of updates arriving within weeks of each other. The strategic difference is in the framing: Home Depot's Sarah Post describes Magic Apron around solving problems wherever the customer shops, while Lowe's Neelima Sharma describes Mylow as an associate who knows you personally, backed by data on past browsing, questions and completed projects.

The commercial stakes differ in visibility. Lowe's has put a number on it — Ellison's three-times conversion figure for online Mylow users — while Home Depot has disclosed engagement volume but not a comparable conversion metric. That gap is likely to shape how each retailer justifies further investment to investors.

The open question is whether first-party assistants can hold customer relationships as general-purpose AI tools absorb more product research. Aptos Retail's Nikki Baird argues retailers are losing the intent signals they once harvested from on-site search, which suggests the assistants' value may hinge less on answering questions well and more on keeping shoppers inside the retailer's own ecosystem.