Nordstrom Just Acquired Two Digital Retail Tech Companies
Nordstrom has closed deals to acquire two digital retail technology companies: BevyUp, the innovators behind a digital selling tool, and MessageYes, a platform rooted in conversational commerce. The announcement comes as the department store retailer continues to make investments in evolving the customer experience, with a strong emphasis on integrating technology across its business.
"The retail environment is changing faster than ever, but the value of service, speed, convenience and newness remain constant," says Brian Gill, technology senior vice president at Nordstrom. "To continue to be successful into the future, we need to invest in technologies that will enable us to deliver on those qualities and better serve customers in a digitally-connected world."
BevyUp
"We're investing in providing our salespeople with a mobile suite of capabilities that enables them to be relevant, informative and accessible to our customers," continues Gill. "As a leader in retail technology and an existing Nordstrom partner, BevyUp is uniquely positioned to help us deliver for our people and our customers."
BevyUp's digital selling platform will be incorporated into a new, integrated mobile Nordstrom employee app that will be rolled out in the coming year.
Founded in 2012 and located in Seattle, WA, BevyUp extends sales associates' customer relationships beyond brick-and- mortar stores. Stylists use BevyUp's mobile clienteling app, Style Boards, to provide their customers with a personalized, omnichannel experience.
"BevyUp was founded on the simple idea that retailers could develop meaningful connections with their customers. We've helped revolutionize the customer experience by extending a salesperson's relationships beyond the confines of brick-and-mortar stores. Becoming a part of the Nordstrom team gives us the opportunity to take our combined efforts even farther," said Mauricio Cuevas, founder and CEO of BevyUp.
MessageYes
MessageYes offers offer frictionless e-commerce over mobile messaging for retailers looking to engage and transact directly with their customers. Leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), human-assisted AI, and integrated payments, the MessageYes platform learns from customer feedback to make the experience serendipitous to each person and brand. Message recipients simply reply "Yes" to instantly buy from their mobile phones.
"MessageYes marks a meaningful addition to our existing depth of talent and experience in engineering, data science and machine learning – all skills that are essential to our future growth," said Gill. "We share the same vision for the future of retail, and their team will accelerate our efforts to deliver a meaningful, personalized experience for our customers."
"Nordstrom has succeeded in building emotional relationships with their customers – creating connections that go well beyond a transaction," says Dave Cotter, founder and CEO of MessageYes. "When we started MessageYes, that's exactly what we wanted to do. Joining Nordstrom enables us to take a lot of our concepts and integrate them across all of the channels Nordstrom uses to serve customers."