Here’s an excerpt from a Seeking Alpha transcript of a Thursday company conference call on quarterly financial results with analysts:
From Blake Nordstrom, president:
We are in unprecedented times and customers are lacking confidence today. We saw this clearly in mid-September when the financial markets became extremely stressed. We are still focused on the same loyal Nordstrom core customer but many have different needs than they did last year. They are shopping less and are making more deliberate purchases. They still desire quality, fashion, and newness but value is more important than it has been in a number of years.
We are also working to sharpen prices across the store. In addition to what we can do with our own private label merchandise, our vendor partners are motivated to stimulate sales as well and we are passing those savings on to customers. For example, we have lowered average regular price by an average of 22 percent on over 800 styles.
We proactively monitor the market to make sure we have the best pricing on like items and we will also honor the price of the competitor if the customer brings it to our attention.
From Peter Nordstrom, executive vice president
We are better off trying to get the price right from the start, rather than try to have a kind of a sale, high/low thing going on and running extra promotions. Now, we have to respond competitively to what is going on out there and you guys obviously see what a lot of our competitors do with their price promotions.
For the third fiscal quarter ended Nov. 1, sales at Nordstrom stores open at least a year, or same-store sales, fell 15.6 percent. For Norstrom Rack, same-store sales rose 3.6 percent.
More from OC Retail:
- Downtown Disney store to close
- Brea Mall store closes
- 1,000-plus store closures expected after Christmas
- Fitness retailer with 5 O.C. stores files for bankruptcy
- O.C. clothing maker to shut down
- Bella Terra store closes
- $35 movie ticket may be coming to O.C.
- Bankrupt discount retailer closing big O.C. store
- Furniture chain closes O.C. store
- Retailer files for bankruptcy, to close 3 O.C. locations
- Circuit City closing O.C. store
- Bankrupt shoe retailer closing last 2 O.C. stores
- Mervyn’s gives liquidation sales date for last 9 O.C. stores
For more from OC Retail, see list of links on right-hand side of this blog.
It’s not as big of savings as people think, oil prices have dropped so of course they have a higher profit margin now.
Maybe if they started concentrating on plus women sizes instead of catering to “skinny women” they would have more shoppers. Women over 40 with less than perfect figures have a lot more money to spend than skinny teens and 20 somethings!!!
I have been a Nordstrom shopper since they came to Southern California, many, many moons ago. I made a choice for quality over the cost, however, in the insecurity of the financial world right now, I am hold ing on tighter to what I have. Nordstrom has ALWAYS had an Encore section for the larger-sized woman. I realize that their Anniversary Sale has good prices, however, there is still a grand profit margin. If they had more average prices, but kept the quality the same, I’d leave more money on the counter and be happy with my purchase, taking home a lot more to fill my closet.