Will making Nordstrom private help the brand AND shoppers?
From a non-business oriented fashion lover
So, I saw a TikTok five days ago from @yszwnska on Nordstrom going private and after listening to her take I said “well yes of course” as I do with all of her takes because she could say anything and I’ll most likely agree.
While thinking about how great this is I realized I didn’t really know what “going private” even meant. So, for those who are interested it essentially means Nordstrom will be owned by the Nordstrom family SOLELY instead of having ownership distributed to the “public” via stock shares. This is good for a few reasons; the main one being increased control for the Nordstrom family over the company.
The aim of this move is to focus on strategy without the outside pressures that come from being a public company as stated Neil Saunders in a LinkedIn post from 5 months ago. This is also good because—as stated in the aforementioned TikTok— the company can focus more on providing better quality to customers. Better featured brands, better stores themselves (I.e. bringing back cafes) were all mentioned in the comments of the post.
At this point I was excited by the news—even though I don’t even have a Nordstrom within a 50-mile radius of me.
This has been on my mind a lot as of late so I figured I’d give a short summary/explanation of the situation for those unaware or interested in learning about it in layman’s terms.
Here’s the links I used!
https://carta.com/learn/startups/private-companies/#
https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/2024/09/04/nordstrom-liverpool-private/