Nordstrom Acquires Trunk Club Personalized Shopping
As the fastest growing and most rapidly changing segment in retail, Nordstrom will better cater to the men's clothing market with its acquisition of Trunk Club. The Trunk Club service will deliver a stylist that combines the convenience of online with a high-touch, personalized shopping experience. This acquisition will align with Nordstrom's strategic priorities around superior customer service, fashion, relevance and seamless shopping experiences.
"What Trunk Club is doing in the personal styling space is a natural extension of our core business," said Erik Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct. "This acquisition is reflective of how we want to move quickly to evolve with customers by finding more ways to deliver a great shopping experience. One of the pillars of our long-term growth strategy is to integrate the online and offline customer experience, and the personal styling space is a great example of how these two worlds are coming together. We view this investment as complementary to our own business and our efforts to better serve customers."
Trunk Club's 250 personal stylists build one-to-one relationships with members to understand their lifestyles and styling preferences before hand-selecting merchandise that is then shipped to the customer. Customers keep what they like and return the rest for free. There is no membership fee, no obligations and no commitments.
The styling site offers a full closet of options from day to day ready-to-wear basics to high-end custom garments. Customers can seamlessly experience the service across the web, mobile and in-store, with showrooms in Chicago, Dallas and Washington D.C., as well as a fourth launching Los Angeles next month. These brick-and-mortar locations offer shoppers the opportunity to meet face to face with their stylists.
"We have more than 1,500 talented personal stylists at Nordstrom as well – in our stores. This complimentary service is an important and successful volume driver for us that our customers appreciate," said Erik Nordstrom. "What Trunk Club does adds to our services capabilities – we can learn from them about what they call 'assisted commerce' so we can continue to meet the evolving needs of our customers."
The Trunk Club will continue to operate independently and focus on its core business while leveraging Nordstrom's capabilities and resources to scale its business. It will be managed by its current leadership team and remain headquartered in Chicago. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2014.
"Nordstrom is stellar at many of the things we aim to improve on to offer our members the best possible service: inventory management, planning and logistics are great examples," said Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. "We knew that a partnership with the best-in-class retailer could significantly enhance our member experience and we are excited to have found a company that is such a natural fit with our culture and approach to customer service."
"What Trunk Club is doing in the personal styling space is a natural extension of our core business," said Erik Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct. "This acquisition is reflective of how we want to move quickly to evolve with customers by finding more ways to deliver a great shopping experience. One of the pillars of our long-term growth strategy is to integrate the online and offline customer experience, and the personal styling space is a great example of how these two worlds are coming together. We view this investment as complementary to our own business and our efforts to better serve customers."
Trunk Club's 250 personal stylists build one-to-one relationships with members to understand their lifestyles and styling preferences before hand-selecting merchandise that is then shipped to the customer. Customers keep what they like and return the rest for free. There is no membership fee, no obligations and no commitments.
The styling site offers a full closet of options from day to day ready-to-wear basics to high-end custom garments. Customers can seamlessly experience the service across the web, mobile and in-store, with showrooms in Chicago, Dallas and Washington D.C., as well as a fourth launching Los Angeles next month. These brick-and-mortar locations offer shoppers the opportunity to meet face to face with their stylists.
"We have more than 1,500 talented personal stylists at Nordstrom as well – in our stores. This complimentary service is an important and successful volume driver for us that our customers appreciate," said Erik Nordstrom. "What Trunk Club does adds to our services capabilities – we can learn from them about what they call 'assisted commerce' so we can continue to meet the evolving needs of our customers."
The Trunk Club will continue to operate independently and focus on its core business while leveraging Nordstrom's capabilities and resources to scale its business. It will be managed by its current leadership team and remain headquartered in Chicago. The transaction is expected to close in the third quarter of 2014.
"Nordstrom is stellar at many of the things we aim to improve on to offer our members the best possible service: inventory management, planning and logistics are great examples," said Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly. "We knew that a partnership with the best-in-class retailer could significantly enhance our member experience and we are excited to have found a company that is such a natural fit with our culture and approach to customer service."