Here’s What They Don’t Tell You.
Short Answer
Home Depot and Lowe’s control roughly 75% of the US home improvement materials market. They set the price of the materials every independent contractor depends on. They then use their store footprint, their brand trust, their data infrastructure, and their AI investment to compete directly in the installation and services market against those same contractors. One of them requires contractors in their installer program to hand over any future customer leads as property of the company. Both are building AI systems specifically designed to control where homeowners spend their money before an independent contractor ever gets a call. This is not a complaint. It is a documented conflict of interest that every homeowner and every independent contractor in this market should understand.
As residential general contractors in Kansas City focused on honest residential home improvement, we see this conflict play out in real bids, real projects, and real homeowner decisions every single week.
I’ve Been Watching This for Thirty Years
When I started in this trade the material supplier and the contractor were two different things. The lumberyard sold you the wood. You built the deck. The window distributor sold you the windows. You installed them. Everyone had a lane.
That model made sense because it was honest about what each party was good at. Suppliers were good at sourcing, logistics, and inventory. Contractors were good at the skilled labor, the customer relationship, and the finished product.
Home Depot and Lowe’s have spent the last two decades erasing that line. And they have done it while simultaneously selling contractors the materials they need to survive.
I buy nothing from either company. That is not an accident. It is a business decision I made because they are not my suppliers. They are my competition. And I refuse to fund the company competing against me.
The Scale of What You’re Actually Dealing With
Before we talk about what they’re doing, understand the size of what they are.
Home Depot: $163 billion in annual revenue. $344 billion market cap. 2,330 stores across North America. In 2024 alone they spent $18.3 billion acquiring SRS Distribution and $4.3 billion acquiring GMS, both moves specifically designed to deepen their penetration into the professional contractor market.
Lowe’s: $83 billion in annual revenue. $120 billion market cap. 1,740 stores. Currently acquiring Foundation Building Materials for $8.8 billion, again specifically targeting the contractor and professional market.
Combined they control approximately 75% of the US home improvement retail market.
An independent contractor in Kansas City competes with that for the same homeowner’s attention. With the same homeowner who just walked out of one of their stores.
The Store Booth That Costs Them Almost Nothing
Lowe’s has offered installation services since 1997. Home Depot runs a parallel program. Both operate through networks of independent contractors, which sounds fine until you understand the economics.
Inside every Home Depot and Lowe’s location, home services are marketed to customers at the point of purchase. A homeowner walks in to buy siding. Before they leave they have been exposed to an installation offer from the same company. The cost of that customer acquisition to Home Depot or Lowe’s is effectively zero. The customer was already there.
An independent contractor in Kansas City spends real money, through lead generation platforms, Google advertising, yard signs, direct mail, and years of reputation building, to reach that same homeowner. The playing field is not level. It is not close to level.
When I was briefly part of the Porch program, which operates embedded inside Lowe’s, I saw firsthand what that introduction actually produced. The economics did not work for an independent contractor doing quality work at fair margins. The program works for Lowe’s. It does not work for the contractor trying to build a sustainable business.
The Contract Clause Nobody Shows You Before You Sign
This is the part of the story that never gets told.
Lowe’s PROvider installer contract contains the following language, this is from their actual documentation:
“All prospects for additional business resulting from or in any way connected to this Contract or any work or Customer Contracts are the property of Lowe’s.”
Read that carefully.
You show up as a Lowe’s installer. You do excellent work. The homeowner is happy. Six months later they call you directly for another project, because they trusted you, because you earned it with your hands and your reputation.
That lead belongs to Lowe’s.
You are required by contract to notify Lowe’s of that inbound call. You built the relationship. You did the work. You cannot use your own skills and reputation to build your own business from a customer you served, because the contract says the customer is theirs.
That is not a supplier relationship. That is indentured marketing.
The Data Advantage That Will Define the Next Decade
Here is the argument that nobody in the contracting industry is making yet. It is the most important one.
Home Depot and Lowe’s have been collecting data on homeowners, contractors, projects, materials, pricing, and purchasing behavior for decades. Every transaction. Every project. Every material list. Every contractor purchase history. Every homeowner who walked in asking about siding and left with a quote for installation services.
They know what projects are being done in every zip code. They know what materials are being purchased and in what quantities. They know which contractors are buying volume and which ones are struggling. They know what homeowners are willing to pay before the contractor ever shows up to bid.
And now they are weaponizing that data with AI.
Home Depot has deployed what industry analysts are explicitly calling a “proprietary data moat.” Their own strategy documentation describes it this way: while any company can license an AI language model, nobody can access Home Depot’s unique repository of decades of home improvement data. That data trains their AI. That AI gets better at predicting what homeowners want, when they want it, and how to position Home Depot’s services at exactly the right moment.
Their Blueprint Takeoffs tool embeds Home Depot directly into the contractor planning process, connecting materials lists to their purchasing channels so that the decision of where to buy gets made before the contractor has a chance to shop elsewhere.
Their Magic Apron AI suite is designed to guide homeowners through project decisions inside the Home Depot ecosystem. Lowe’s built Mylow in partnership with OpenAI to do the same thing.
These are not customer service tools. They are systems designed to capture the homeowner’s attention and spending at the earliest possible planning stage, before they search for a contractor, before they ask a neighbor for a referral, before they find an independent contractor who might recommend a different supplier.
An independent contractor in Kansas City has none of this. No decades of transaction data. No AI infrastructure. No partnership with OpenAI. No booth at the front of a store with 40,000 daily visitors.
That gap is widening every year.
What a Fair Model Actually Looks Like
I buy from Menards. That is not a coincidence and it is not just about price.
Menards does not have an in-house installation program. They are a materials retailer. They sell materials. That is their business. When a customer walks in and needs installation help, Menards directs them to a board of local licensed and insured contractors who have registered with the store. Staff actively refers customers to these contractors. Menards makes money selling materials. The contractor makes money doing the install. The homeowner gets connected to a vetted local professional.
Nobody is competing against the people they depend on. Nobody owns the customer relationship that the contractor earned. Nobody is building an AI system to capture the homeowner’s wallet before the contractor gets a chance to bid.
That is what a fair supplier relationship looks like. It existed for most of the history of this industry. It still exists at Menards. It has been deliberately dismantled by the two largest players in the market.
When homeowners look for a trusted home renovation contractor or local general contractors near me in Kansas City, the best results come from contractors who operate independently of big-box referral programs, not through them.
What Homeowners Are Actually Paying For
This matters to you as a homeowner because the conflict of interest costs you money and quality.
When a contractor is forced to compete against the company selling them materials, one of two things happens. Either the contractor absorbs the competitive disadvantage and operates on margins too thin to sustain quality work and fair wages. Or the contractor raises prices to compensate and you pay more than the job should cost.
The contractors who do the best work, the ones who have spent decades building expertise, maintaining their licenses, carrying proper insurance, pulling permits correctly, are the ones most harmed by this dynamic. They are not willing to race to the bottom on price to compete with a $344 billion company’s installation referral program. So they either charge more to survive or they lose the bid.
The contractor who wins the bid from Home Depot’s referral program is the one who agreed to work at Home Depot’s margins. That is the contractor showing up at your door.
The Regulatory Question Nobody Is Asking
In Kansas, if you own a liquor store, you cannot also own a bar. The state recognizes that a supplier having a financial interest in the retail consumption of their own product creates a conflict that harms the market and ultimately the consumer.
Nobody has asked that question about home improvement retail.
A company that controls 47% of the US home improvement materials market and simultaneously operates an installation services program competing directly against the contractors who buy their materials, that is a vertical integration that deserves scrutiny. Not necessarily regulation. But scrutiny.
The question worth asking is simple: does the homeowner sitting across the table from a Home Depot installation quote understand that the company quoting the job is also the company that set the price of the materials going into it?
Most don’t. They should.
The Bottom Line
I have spent nearly 30 years doing this work in Kansas City. I hold a Johnson County Class A General Contractor license. I carry $2 million in general aggregate liability. I pull permits. I do the work correctly.
I compete every day against companies with $163 billion in revenue, AI systems trained on decades of homeowner data, store booths that cost them nothing to fill, and contracts that legally claim ownership of every customer relationship their installers build.
I buy from Menards because Menards is not my competition. Home Depot and Lowe’s are.
If you are a homeowner reading this, ask who you are actually hiring when you take an installation quote from a big box retailer. Ask whether the company quoting your project has a financial interest in the materials going into it. Ask whether the contractor who shows up built their reputation or just agreed to work at someone else’s margins.
If you are an independent contractor reading this, you already know. You have known for years. The question is whether enough of us are willing to say it out loud.
I am.
Whether you are searching for residential general contractors near me, residential general contractors in Kansas City, or an independent home renovation contractor who answers to you and not a big-box referral program, the questions above are how you find the right one.
Work With a Contractor Who Answers to You
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Joshua Harden is the founder of Acumen Renovations, a Class A licensed general contractor serving the Kansas City metro including Overland Park, Shawnee, Prairie Village, Leawood, Kansas City KS, and Kansas City MO. He has nearly 30 years of experience in exterior renovation including decks, siding, windows, doors, and full ground-up residential construction. Every post on this site comes directly from what he sees in the field, no ghostwriter, no agency. Acumen Renovations holds an A+ BBB rating and has been named a Nextdoor Neighborhood Favorite in 2022, 2023, and 2025.
This is part two of a two-part series on what is actually driving up the cost of contractor work in Kansas City. If you haven’t read part one, start there:
Why Your Contractor Bid Is Higher Than It Should Be — And Who’s Actually Pocketing the Difference
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