How Nordstrom will achieve $1 billion in web sales
A $50 million expansion of its customer contact center in Iowa and the combination of existing inventory management systems onto a single platform will help Nordstrom Inc. achieve $1 billion in web sales within six years, the company says.
"Our online business has experienced rapid growth and we are committed to building a billion-dollar business within four to six years,” says Nordstrom Direct president Jamie Nordstrom.
To keep pace with its growing web sales, Nordstrom, No. 40 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide to Retail Web Sites, will add 258,000 square feet to its customer contact and fulfillment center in Cedar Rapids, Iowa. The expansion will create about 500 new jobs and double the size of the contact center’s working space to more than 500,000 square feet.
Adding on to its fulfillment and customer center will coincide with Nordstrom’s plan to streamline its back-end inventory management systems within two years. The company is in the first year of a three-year program to combine its entire product inventory into one back-end system that supports Nordstrom’s network of 156 stores, catalog and Nordstrom.com. It’s performing the work internally. “We need to align inventory with the Retek system our stores are on,” says a Nordstrom spokeswoman. “Direct has been using the Ecometry system, which has become outdated.”
Nordstrom notes it spends about $150 million every year supporting and upgrading back-end and e-commerce systems. “The company`s updating of its direct business inventory systems will tie in with the store system, creating a single view of inventory across channels,” Nordstrom says. “This will result in a more seamless shopping experience for our customers whether they choose to shop online, in store or by phone.”
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