Nordstrom Tries an Extreme Makeover With Topshop

Nordstrom, the upscale department-store chain, navigated the recession and its aftermath better than its peers. Yet even a company that has posted 10 consecutive quarters of double-digit sales growth isn’t immune to today’s fast-changing retail environment. At a time when wary U.S. consumers obsessively comparison-shop online and open their wallets only for must-have products, retailers are falling over themselves to lock up merchandise shoppers can’t find anyplace else. “For a time, you had the same four department stores as mall anchors, and they had the same four brands,” says Deborah Weinswig, a Citigroup analyst. “They needed to spice things up.”

In Nordstrom’s case, it’s a matter of wooing more fashion-conscious women. Since the recession, many female shoppers have been buying fewer clothes—bad news for a chain that generates about a third of its more than $10 billion in annual sales from ladies’ apparel. To get women excited about shaking up their wardrobes again, Pete Nordstrom, the president of merchandising, has cut a deal to sell clothes from Topshop, a London-based retailer known for mid-priced trendy styles—punk-inspired pinafores and ladylike tweed—that defy easy characterization. It’s the sort of fashion people don’t expect to find at Nordstrom. And it could draw in new customers—or turn off existing ones.