A Year in Review: Celebrating 2021 with our Brand Partners, Customers and Employees
We've long believed the success of our business is centered around offering unique product selections and experiences for our customers, giving great service and creating a culture where our employees feel valued and welcome. From launching new partnerships to growing our product assortment and giving back to local communities, we wanted to take a moment to celebrate these major events and milestones.
Staying Closer to You
At the heart of great service lies a unique combination of convenience and connection by delivering relevant and personal customer experiences. To continue to deliver this service, we expanded our Market Strategy to include our top 20 markets. By connecting our store and supply chain inventory in a market, we provide customers with an average of 4x more products available for next-day pickup.
And this heritage of service isn't new. We celebrated our 120th Anniversary with gratitude for all our customers and employees who have joined us on this journey. We scaled discovery and connection through our evolved digital services and introduced Livestream shopping for our customers. We continue to serve customers on their terms with Nordstrom Styling Services and personalize their experience based on their budget, body type (even at 7'4"), and lifestyle.
In the spirit of staying closer to customers, we rolled out a new Nordstrom Rack campaign, More Reasons to Rack, and released a Nordstrom signature song with local Seattle artist, Shaina Shepherd
Furthering Our Commitment to Diversity, Inclusion and Belonging
We believe in the value diversity brings to our company and our communities, and we know we have a role to play in contributing positive change with our employees and company leadership, within our communities and in the marketplace.
Driving Marketplace Change
This year, we signed the 15 Percent Pledge and committed to growing our purchases from businesses owned or founded by Black individuals by 10x by the end of 2030. We expanded our inclusive beauty offering and partnered with Black-owned brands including New Concepts: Black_Space, Center Stage: Black Founders and Black Owned Everything with Zerina Akers.
To create more gender-inclusive customer experiences, we introduced brands and partnerships like BP + Wildfang, which challenges stereotypes and gender norms and provided gender knowledge training for employees, and the Phluid Project, which launched as a gender-free fashion brand and is known for breaking the binary. We partnered with Hilal Ibrahim, the founder and CEO of Henna & Hijabs, to create an exclusive collection of hijabs created for the modern Muslim woman.
Developing Talent, Culture and Leadership
The environment and relationships we build with our employees play a pivotal role in making Nordstrom a place where every employee is welcomed, respected, appreciated and able to be themselves. To build a diverse talent pipeline and reach our 2025 goals, we partnered with AfroTech for the second year in a row.
Nordstrom also added two new members to the Executive Team, Farrell Redwine as Chief Human Resources Officers and Alexis Depree as Chief Supply Chain Officer. Five of the company's 13 executive team members are women. Nordstrom is committed to diverse workforce representation across all business areas, and at every level of leadership.
Connecting with Our Communities
Giving back to the communities we serve has long been a cornerstone of our culture. We partnered with our customers to provide basic necessities to kids in our communities. Our employees delivered shoes with Shoes That Fit and coats with Operation Warm to kids in local communities. On Giving Tuesday, we launched our holiday giving campaign with our partners Big Brothers Big Sisters and Operation Warm and donated $1.5 million to core partners benefiting underserved youth.
Leaving it Better than We Found It
We know we have a responsibility to prioritize environmental sustainability and leave the planet better than we found it. In support of our 2025 goal to take back 100 tons of hard to recycle beauty packaging, we expanded BEAUTYCYCLE program to Canada. The program received Elle Magazine's Green Beauty Star Award and Good Housekeeping's Sustainable Innovation award.
We've made progress on our environmental sustainability goals and contributed to non-profits like the Clean Air Task Force who helps advocate for clean air measures and innovation in neglected low-carbon technologies. To support our commitment to give $1 million in corporate grants to support industry innovation for textile recycling, we donated to FABSCRAP.
Increasing Customer Choices through Alternative Partnership Models
We have committed to increasing the digital velocity of our business by growing product assortment and increasing the linkage between digital and physical. By unlocking the power of alternative partnership models, we have the ability scale customer choices. We announced a game-changing joint venture with ASOS, becoming the only brick-and-mortar presence for the company which holds Topshop, Topman, Miss Selfridge and HIIT. We also expanded into licensed sports products through our partnership with Fanatics.
Evolving Customer Experiences Digitally and in Store
While digital discovery continues to grow in importance, we know that discovery also happens in our stores and created unique and engaging experiences for our customers. We launched a redefined Home concept along with the opening of the Nordstrom Home NYC shop. We are committed to listening to our customers and offer the breadth of product they are looking for. We unveiled an expanded Fine Jewelry offering with 14 new-to-Nordstrom brands as well as a new site experience on Nordstrom.com. An annual customer favorite, we celebrated the Nordstrom Anniversary Sale is our biggest, most popular sale of the year with brand-new arrivals from the best brands. We are grateful to our customers, employees, partners and communities for the role they have played in this exciting year.