Nordstrom at Your Service Again

Years ago, my wife favored a particular YSL perfume that, for some reason, had become difficult to get in the U.S.

Nordstrom, then on its way to becoming a nationwide phenomenon, had just opened its first New York-area store. I went there to find the perfume and, in the busy cosmetics department at lunch hour, a sales associate seemed to put everything and everybody else aside to see if she could find the perfume somewhere – in another Nordstrom store, in the warehouse, on a shipping container somewhere on the seas or, heaven forbid, in the nearby Bloomingdale’s. And she did it all with utmost good humor. I never felt I was taking her away from something else more important.

She found. I bought. And I remember thinking, “Ah, so this is why Nordstrom is Nordstrom.”

Well, that canny old retailer from Seattle is up to her old tricks again. Today, were I shopping for that perfume or anything else, I could log onto Nordstrom.com, find an item that appealed to me, locate the store that’s currently carrying it, pay for it and arrange to pick it up – or have it sent.

The database is equipped to scan the inventory in every Nordstrom store plus the warehouse.

Not only does this appear to be extremely shopper-friendly, but it bridges that gap between buying online and in-store. “The number one request we got at our call center was, ‘I’m looking at this item online, can I look at it at my store?’ ” says Jamie Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct.

The company says it had to hire a few more shipping employees to wrap and send items from each store but the increase in sales has more than offset the cost. Plus inventory is moving, and often at full-price.

Okay, but here’s what puzzles me: Why doesn’t everybody do this? Other stores have web sites that permit shoppers to hunt for items. But apparently, only a very few other retailers offer the option of buy it here, pick it up there. And, as usual, few other retailers are willing to commit to the “think customer first” philosophy that has always driven Nordstrom.

We’re in a challenging time for retailers. I recently completed an article on department stores, and everyone’s saying the right things about how retailers need to address shoppers’ needs now more than ever before. Then other things – costs, technical complexities, departmental territorialism – get in the way.

What’s the payback? In the year before Nordstrom introduced its online inventory search capability, same-store sales fell 11.9 percent. In the last year, those sales have jumped 8 percent. Who wouldn’t like to go online and search for those numbers?