There was a brilliant article that I came across today on Nordstrom.com. Mind you, I can't find one in NYC to save my life (do they even exist here?), but I still love the place. I've been going to Nordstrom stores since I was in a stroller. I never bought anything when I was little, of course; I was my mom's hang-everything-up girl in the dressing room... and if I was really good, I was allowed to get a happy meal from the McD's in the mall. Too bad I wasn't the best behaved child. Heh.
Anyways, Nordstrom is usually portrayed as a higher end department store (as opposed to Macy's, JC Penny, etc). In their economical fight, they haven't taken the usual route of lowering prices or hosting perpetual sales. Instead, they've redesigned their e-commerce site to include up-to-the-minute inventory of their online AND physical stores. This means that you can buy that jacket that you love online and pick it up the same day in the store (or have it shipped to you).
The change works this way: Say that a shopper was looking at a blue Marc Jacobs handbag at Nordstrom.com. She could see where it was available at nearby stores, and reserve it for pickup the same day.
More significant, if the Web warehouse was out of that bag, it did not matter. Inventory from Nordstrom’s 115 regular stores is also included. Maybe there was just one handbag left in the entire company, sitting forlornly in the back of the Roosevelt Field store — it would be displayed online and store employees would ship it to the Web customer.
What Nordstrom did on its Web site — displaying stock from both the Web warehouse and its stores all at once, was unusual. And that, said Jamie Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct, drove "some pretty meaningful results."
There are other stores that do something similar, but no department stores that I'm aware of. Borders Bookstores offer the ability to reserve your book or DVD online and have it waiting for you at the cashier's stand. Electronics stores like Circuit City and Best Buy have also provided similar services.
(via New York Times)
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