Nordstrom Tailors to Suit Cherry Hill

(MoneyWatch)  One Nordstrom is not necessarily like another, even if they are operating in close enough proximity that you might think they would be.

Yet, even at the upper end of retailing today, where the style of a city and the sensibilities of designers are supposed to set the pace, the customer is the one who determines what's in and what's not, in this case, right at store level.

Nordstrom is opening its second Philadelphia area store in the Cherry Hill, N.J., just across the Delaware and a short drive from its original store in the market, located in the major retail center of King of Prussia, Pa.

As suggested, though, geography isn't the only factor that divides the two stores. Nordstrom is doing its utmost these days to precisely fit what it offers to local communities, even if they are in the same market. So the Nordstrom in Cherry Hill offers several departments, including Christian Dior shoes, a Jo Malone fragrance boutique, Temperley women's apparel, Marc Jacobs handbags and la Mer skin care that the King of Prussia store doesn't.

Today, Nordstrom considers it buyers to be editors, said spokesperson Nicole Pietromonaco. As a store opens up, one of their jobs is to examine the local community and determine what its tastes are, then add merchandise and designer names that particularly suit.

The King of Prussia Nordstrom differs from Cherry Hill in other ways besides product line up. For one thing, King of Prussia is a bit bigger than the 138,000 square foot Cherry Hill location. Still, they are more alike than dissimilar, offering many of the same products and even the same restaurants and espresso bars. However, they may differ more if suburbs on either side of the Delaware diverge in their sensibilities more than Nordstrom's buyers yet believe. Pietromonaco said the buyers' work shifts once the store is open, and they'll be carefully tracking purchasing patterns to get the fit between store and community even tighter.

For example, the Cherry Hill store opened with an assortment of men's dress shirts that ran to about 2,000. That will change. The number may shrink or it may stay the same, but the line up will be amended to fit what the customer votes for with dollars spent. "We're trying to offer a greater assortment," she said. "The buyers make their best guess about what the customer will respond to, then they tailor the merchandise."