In Blog #126 I talked about why you should treat people like you would want to be treated.   In this blog I want to talk about how Nordstrom had buyers for each store

Nordstrom had their buyers work in the store they bought for. We also managed the department. The reason why this worked so well was we could react to our individual stores more effectively. One great example of this was a woven sandal package from Sesto Meucci. The Palo Alto store was selling these quite well.

The rep from this brand also sold me the Van Eli line as the parent company was Wolfe shoe company. Gary Wolfe had a knack for great items and the shoes came in extended sizes which was great for this store. We were also having great success with the Van Eli line that had a wide range of style but focused on great dress shoes.

Dean was the rep and was great at coming out to the store and helping me with the mix. When I transferred to this store, we had the Van Eli line but not the Sesto brand. Dean showed me the woven sandals and I thought they would be perfect for the store. They were made in Italy and the quality and craftsmanship was amazing. We bought 3-4 different styles initially in different colors but later expanded it based on the great success we had.

I developed a great friendship with Dean as we had a lot of fun building these two brands for the store. The salespeople loved both brands and Dean must have felt like a rockstar when he came to the store.

This buyer system worked well as we could react to our customers in the right way. It helped when you had a great rep to make sure you had timely deliveries and suggested the right items based on your customers. Dean understood this and that’s why we had such great success together.