So 125 years. What does the number mean for you?
Uh well it's a long time. Our business is fashion. It's about newness and certainly we're always trying to look forward but it is a moment to reflect I think internally for our company for the people who've come before us or family. I pulled out my great-grandfather's book the other day and reread that. And it's something to think about that the journey how we got here and so much of it is about Seattle too. It's you know literally our company growing up with the city through all those years. It's been fun.
You've evolved. You've also survived a couple pandemics, couple world wars. What's been the key to evolving as a company?
Uh well, persistence. I think hanging in there a lot. But I think what's helped us a lot. I mean certainly the foundation of our company has been customer service. And that hasn't changed for 125 years. What does change is how customers define service and we work every day to be close to the customer and really view our business through the lens of the customer. And that helps us change, that helps us evolve. And we talk all the time, how does this play out to the customer? Where do we need to change for the customer? It's the same outcome we're looking for, taking care of them, giving great service, but how we do it has changed a lot. And I think that helps us change with the times.
Yeah. What is good customer service? Because that is what a lot of people associate with Nordstrom.
Yeah. It's more complex than it was when I was selling shoes. Certainly back then it was really defined solely as the one-to-one interaction of salesperson and the customer in a store. That's still perhaps the most important customer service interaction we have. But there's so many more. Certainly e-commerce, the digital touch points that we have. It's not just who the customer is, it's what's important to them at that time. Speed, convenience is important to all of us at certain amount of times and that gets defined differently all the time. Same day delivery is capability we need to have and do have and that's something obviously is much more modern times. In terms of the company, it's expanded as time has gone on with stores across the country, but a lot of people still associate Nordstrom with Seattle.
How important has it been for you to maintain a Seattle brand?
We'd be honored if we are associated with Seattle. It's we're proud to call it our hometown. It's where we've all grown up. It's literally where myself, my brother, my cousin have learned the business. You know, this is I don't know the day, but it's about my 50th anniversary of working here. I was 12 years old when I first started Kitty Corner, our old store there of being a stock boy in Brass Pond Shoes. And so our company has grown the city. My great-grandfather came here as an immigrant and I probably a pretty common immigrant story in this country. But came here with nothing and opened a shoe store in Third and Pike. And the city's gone through a lot of ups and downs. Our company's gone through a lot of ups and downs. And yeah, I don't know if this could have happened in another city. It really was provided the opportunity for my ancestors to work hard and take care of customers and grow with the city. So, we're very thankful to be part of the city.
We've talked about evolving ups and downs. About a year or so ago, the company went from being public to private. What does that mean? What does that mean not only for the company, but for consumers?
Well, I think for customers probably not much and even our people. There's not much that's changed on the surface. My brother P, my cousin Jamie and I have been here for a long time and so it's not a takeover. It's also somewhat of a unique go private. We didn't take on a bunch of debt to get it done. We didn't take on private equity. It is our family is majority owner. We have a minority partner who's completely aligned with us. So maybe that's where the story is. It's not a ton of change. It does allow us, I think, to remove some noise, have even greater focus on what's important to the business, particularly the core of the business. You know, things like getting great customer service and one-on-one, having great stores. What's that mean? You know, there's not new malls being built in this country. There's not a lot of growth of new stores, new Nordstrom stores. But it's super important to our brand and who we are and giving great experiences in a store presents the opportunities we have allows us to do things digitally allows us to grow our rack business which we're being pretty aggressive about. So I do think on the edges being private helps with that focus.
Yeah. You're moving the rack store even in downtown Seattle to be even closer to this building. What does that say about the power of that brand and how successful it has been for the company?
Yeah, I mean it is an ecosystem there. There's a synergy between our rack business and our Nordstrom business. Rack stores are biggest source of new customer acquisition. Good percentage of those customers end up migrating across to become Nordstrom customers as well. And it's just a great business. It's been very successful part of our business. We have a lot of momentum there. Right now, we're open about 25 stores this year. We think we can ramp that up to get to about 50 stores a year. There's a lot of places where we can add a rack store. It is something that works because it is not just rack, it is Nordstrom Rack. It carries the same brands that we have in our Nordstrom business. And that synergy is what really drives our business. So, we don't look to locate them way out in maybe the outskirts of areas. We look at close to our best stores and this is our flagship store. So they have a rack store right across the street which we have now. But to take it from the basement and bring it above ground in a more prominent location is something we're really excited about.
And there's a similar but it's not apples to apples comparison with what you've done in Belleview. There's a rack store there. There's obviously a store that does extremely well at Belleview Square. I heard you make comments recently at the Petersontown Regional Council about Seattle and Belleview. How do those two stores stack up now for you internally in the company?
Well, they're two really good stores for us. They're both top five stores in our entire chain. So, we do a lot of business here a few miles apart, but it's different. You know, Bellevue Square, it's a mall. Obviously, downtown Seattle's an urban environment. Both very successful and we certainly have customers who go back and forth between the two. It's a big deal for us to have two big stores so close to each other. They get a lot of attention. Again, it is our home. We try a lot of new things in one of these two stores all the time. You see it here. We have the Mohigh retrospective going on. And there's a lot of special events around our 125th anniversary that these two stores get disproportionate amount of that.
And how do you avoid the idea that, you know, people come and window shop at Nordstrom and then maybe go home and order from some other website? How do you fight off those tendencies?
