One year after building the home improvement industry’s first creator network, Lowe’s is advancing its strategy by giving creators the opportunity to not only promote products but also help design them.

The program, called “Lowe’s Creator: Into the Blue,” extends an application-based product pitch system the company first launched for small and minority-owned businesses in 2022. Under the new framework, creators enrolled in Lowe’s affiliate-style Creator Network, along with creators outside it, can submit product ideas for evaluation by the company’s marketing and merchandising teams, with potential for retail distribution.

Jen Wilson, Lowe’s Senior Vice President and Chief Marketing Officer and a 20-year company veteran, oversees a remit that spans retail media, loyalty, insights, and brand marketing alongside the creator program. That unified view shapes how she frames the shift. “We’re not simply giving our creators the brief and asking them to do the creative,” Jen says. “We’re saying instead – create with us and build with us.”

Hundreds of applications have arrived since Cannes, where Lowe’s announced “Lowe’s Creator: Into the Blue” in June. The application window closes September 1. With the Creator Network approaching 30,000 members and the company treating creators as an assortment intelligence layer, the program reflects a deeper integration than the commission-based content model Lowe’s built over the past year.

The Jump From Affiliate to Inventor

The Creator Network launched in 2025 primarily as an affiliate-based program. Creators earned commissions tied to revenue through personalized storefronts, a commission-first model that departed from the contract-based creator engagements Lowe’s still runs for major tentpole moments. “Lowe’s Creator: Into the Blue” extends the relationship further.

At Cannes, Jen found the contrast between the industry’s baseline and Lowe’s current position striking. “I was listening to a lot of creators talk about what good looked like for them,” she says. “They were just trying to get away from brands telling them what to say on their own channels.” What Lowe’s is offering goes beyond that by design, she says.

The program accepts three types of submissions: existing products seeking distribution and retail exposure, ideas that need development and sourcing support, and collaborations tied to an existing Lowe’s product line. Selected creators will have access to Lowe’s product development, design, sourcing, and merchandising teams.

The Scorecard: Virality, Price Point, White Space

When the application window closes, Lowe’s marketing team will score submissions against a rubric before passing the strongest candidates to a focused committee within the merchandising organization. Two criteria lead the scoring: social virality potential and accessible price point.

Jen points to the company’s own internally developed products as a benchmark. A limited-edition pallet coaster set launched recently and sold out in under three weeks. “We have sellouts like this of small-scale products on a regular basis,” she says. “Virality will be really key.”

The macro environment shapes the price logic. “More and more of the products that are becoming viral or that have a great amount of social demand are accessible price points,” Jen says. The underlying assumption: consumers are more willing to treat themselves to a low-cost item as a social impulse buy than a large-ticket renovation product right now.

Category white space also factors into the score. Jen says four of the five impromptu product ideas pitched to her at Cannes involved pets, which aligns with internal research on millennial homeowners, a core audience, and a category where Lowe’s has been expanding. “It’s also white space that we’ve been evaluating from an assortment perspective,” she says. “There’s such emotional affection and love toward pets when it comes to the home.”

The creator’s own profile weighs alongside the product. The scorecard will factor in follower count and, as Jen describes it, their “ability to stretch across a wider audience.” The question: if the product takes off, can the creator carry it beyond their existing following?

No Standard Deal, but MrBeast Sets a Precedent

Compensation for selected creators will not follow a single structure. Jen says each partnership will be negotiated individually, shaped by the idea, the creator’s reach, and the product’s projected scale.

A MrBeast collaboration, which produced the MrBeast Lab Swarms collectible toy kit, now sold in Lowe’s stores, provides an early reference point. 

“If I’m a creator and I launch a product with Lowe’s, maybe I only talk about it a few times,” Jen explains. “But if I have an incentive to get it to sell, I might talk about it five or ten times.” The logic serves both parties. A creator with a financial stake in sell-through has reason to sustain promotion beyond launch, while Lowe’s gains sustained earned media without relying on a flat content fee.

On the downside, early rollouts will likely be online-only or limited to a subset of Lowe’s top-performing stores rather than chain-wide.

Creators as the Canary in the Coal Mine

One argument Jen makes for the creator program goes beyond content and sales: it functions as a distributed product and assortment intelligence system that surfaces merchandising blind spots quickly.

She points to a flooring case. A creator flagged that wide-plank hardwood and vinyl plank flooring, common across design social accounts, was not available at Lowe’s while competitors carried it. The creator was shopping elsewhere. Lowe’s reviewed the assortment and filled the hole. “You address the assortment gap, and then you’re already seeing sales accelerate,” Jen says. “It’s like an extension of your own team.”

Lowe’s has since formalized a feedback channel: creators can submit observations directly to the marketing team, which routes them to merchandising. Jen frames the model as a standing alternative to AI-driven trend detection. “You have folks who are setting the trends, and then they’re the ones telling you, ‘Hey, you’re missing something,'” she says. “This is something influencers can do and not AI.”

Co-Creation as the Long-Term Bet

Jen describes Lowe’s five-year trajectory in terms of how deeply co-creation becomes embedded, across content, product, processes and technology. She draws an analogy to the company’s relationships with major broadcast partners, noting that Lowe’s already customizes programming with those networks and intends to hold its creator relationships to the same standard.

“I view this Creator Network as just as important as one of those big networks,” she says. “If I’m partnering with an NBC or a Fox, that’s exactly what I want from my creators. But I have it times 30,000.”

The value Jen emphasizes above all in the creator relationship is one she believes no paid media can replicate. She traces Lowe’s Black Friday performance in part to how creators mobilized their audiences around a product moment. “What makes it so unique and special that a creator can give you that any other media vehicle or any other way of doing business can’t is the emotional connection,” Jen says. “You shouldn’t underestimate that.”

With hundreds of applications already submitted and September 1 approaching, Lowe’s will begin reviewing submissions after the window closes. Which creators and which products will advance remains undisclosed.

“We’re keeping it a surprise,” Jen says.

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