Nordstrom recently announced a manager for its Vancouver location and put out a call for job seekers, signalling that the mega-retailer is marching towards its much-anticipated September opening at Pacific Centre.
The fashion giant, known for customer service that includes personal shopping, announced last week that it has brought on Chris Wanlass, a 23-year company veteran, to oversee the store that also has to fill more than 1,000 retail positions.
“We are working hard to bring the Nordstrom experience that (shoppers) might know from the United States to Canada,” Nordstrom spokesperson John Bailey told Westender.
Nordstrom’s opening follows on the heels of another retail giant – Target, a lower-price point chain that had a massive roll out, then massive failure in Canada. The billion-dollar fiasco ended with full-scale closures and bankruptcy of Target’s Canadian division. One of the complaints was that Target’s Canadian stores (more than 100) didn’t measure up to their US counterparts.
Bailey said he couldn’t comment on Target’s failure, but noted that at Nordstrom the goal is to curate their stores according to the taste of each market.
“Our focus is on serving one customer at a time and getting to know and understand customers in each of the cities that we are going to open stores in,” Bailey said.
Nordstrom’s foray into Canada started last fall, when it opened its first cross-border store in Calgary. A second location opened in Ottawa last month. Vancouver is next with the official opening date set for Sept. 18 at Pacific Centre, then three stores in Toronto over the next two years.
It’s too early to say which of the hundreds of designers Nordstrom carries will be on the racks at the Vancouver location, according to Bailey.
“It’s probably too soon for us to share some of those details as our buyers are currently in the process of determining what those brands will be,” Bailey said. “Our buyers have made regular trips to Vancouver to learn as much as they can about the customer who might be shopping with us when we open our store, but we won’t know until we open our doors on Sept. 18 what we got right and what it is that we can work upon. And so we hope that customers will be vocal, and they will let us know. We will work hard to listen and make changes in real time so that we are offering customers the best merchandise, tailored specifically for them.”
What is known is that Nordstrom Pacific Centre will run over three storeys and 230,000 square feet. Along with clothes for women, men, and children, it will have a cosmetics area, restaurant, and coffee bar.
The focus at Nordstrom is on offering variety – a range of price points, designers, and looks, Bailey explained, saying their typical customer appreciates a mixed bag of retail options.
Another advantage to having a Nordstrom in town is that shoppers can take their returns to a nearby location.
“If, for instance, someone came to Seattle and picked something up and got it home and realized it didn’t fit them the way that they had hoped, they could return that to their local store,” Bailey explained.
For many eager shoppers, the hope is that they will no longer have to make the lengthy trip south to get that “Nordstrom experience” in Seattle, where the company started as a shoe store in 1901, and instead will find all of their favourite designers right here at home in Vancouver.
