Nordstrom has been in business for over 100 years, and they have a total of 370 stores in the country including their full-line stores, Nordstrom Rack, Trunk Club and others. Among those others, Nordstrom Local is included.<\/p>\n
Nordstrom Local is a new service concept store located among many luxury brands in Melrose Place, Los Angeles. The store first opened its doors less than a year ago, in October 2017. It carries every product that Nordstrom has to offer but with a twist. Nordstrom local has no dedicated in store inventory. Who would have thought that a fashion retail store with not with no store room could ever be a thing?<\/p>\n
Nordstrom Local is a 3,000 sq. ft. store, a true downsize from their usual 140,000 sq. ft. It does not have any clothes in storage but it does have one styling suite and eight dressing rooms, a beer, wine and press juice bar and a nail bar. From the way it is described it, if we take out the dressing rooms, it could easily be a cool new bar in L.A. The idea is that when customers shop at the store, the clothing they buy is transferred from another store or Nordstrom\u2019s main warehouse. The store is carefully located with a big full-line store very close by. Also, the store has other services: it is a pick-up location for online purchases, it provides personal stylists to help you shop and it does in store alterations and tailoring. All of these services are possible in such a small store thanks to this lack of dedicated store.<\/p>\n
This is not the first time Nordstrom has played around with its inventory and has made a move that could possibly be a game changer in the industry. In 2010, when online shopping was starting to boom, the company decided to change its inventory strategy. They introduced in store pick up, a service where the customer could check online if the product they were looking for was available in any nearby store, make a reservation and then go and pick it up in store the same day. They also made another move that allowed them to increase customer purchases on their website without having to increase their already existing inventory. Nordstrom decided to combine all of their inventories when shopping online. So, their website showed all items available at their warehouse as well as their brick and mortar stores. This augmented revenue because, if a particular item you were looking for was out of stock at their warehouse maybe a store had it. The customer is still able to buy the item since one of the 122 full-line stores is likely to have it and it\u2019s going to send it out to him or her.<\/p>\n
As new trends within fashion retail brands arise, do you know of any other brand that might be doing something similar? What other inventory strategies are companies using? Is Nordstrom trying to imitate luxury brands?<\/p>\n
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