Much like we heard from The Home Depot, Lowe’s is still seeing pressure with grill sales as we make it through the Pandemic buying patterns. They categorize big ticket items as those over $500.
Yeah, I think when we look at big ticket in particular, we continue to see pressure, right? We called out large tickets greater than 500 down 7.6% for the quarter. Most of that right now is still related to DIY, and we’re continuing with the Q4 trends that we saw there where big ticket was down 8.8%. I think a lot of that, as we look at, you know, discretionary, there is some seasonal impact there as we continue to see some level of pressure, you know, from patio, from grills with multiyear replacement cycles. We are continuing to see pressure from appliances as we normalize against the promo environment.
Brandon Sink – Executive Vice President, Chief Financial Officer
It was a vicious cycle through the Pandemic because there was so much pull ahead with people being stuck at home, and receiving stimulus checks. Through 2022 and 2023, demand fell significantly, so retailers and grill companies were combatting that with higher and more frequent promotions.
Normalization in the grill sales cycle isn’t here yet, but it should be soon. Lowe’s noted some positive signs towards the end of their Q1. They attribute some of this performance to targeted marketing promotions based on geography. Obviously, spring comes earlier to the South than the northern states.
Yeah, thanks, Marvin. And, Seth, I think the big difference for us this year is that we took a slightly different approach to our marketing. We — you know, as I said in my prepared remarks, with a geo-targeted approach, which was really going south to north with our SpringFest campaign, and, you know, we put some offers out there that were seasonally relevant. We were able to target those south to north.
And then, we got a little bit of weather favorability that happened in March, and then we carried that into April. We were able to navigate some storm — you know, some storm weather. We took advantage of that. But the teams did a really nice job of making sure that we had, you know, new products, new brands.
We saw — you know, Toro really responded well for us. We continue to see EGO perform well. We continue to see anything that we’ve done, as I said earlier in a question that was asked earlier, around innovative products perform well. We’ve seen the consumer respond, you know, now, you know, with the weather advantages, you know, the grass is growing, so, you know, they’re out there buying zero-turn riding mowers.
They’re buying full-size gas grills. So, we’re seeing that work. And now we’ve got — as we go into Q2, we’ve got Memorial Day, July 4th, Father’s Day in front of us, so we’ve got to take advantage of those events as we finish out the quarter. So, those are really the results.
Bill Boltz – Executive Vice President, Merchandising