Nordstrom Marketplace Come Alive !! How to Become a Seller in Nordstrom?

By Alan Luusama Lee

Nordstrom’s third-party marketplace is now LIVE, as promised during its Q4 2023 earnings call.

Since the end of April 2024, Nordstrom marketplace has started providing certain third-party sellers the opportunity to sell and ship their products directly through the Nordstrom.com from seller’s warehouses. It moves toward to a new goal of expanding the retailer’s online assortment and allowing it to easily add new brands under Nordstrom marketplace.

This won’t be an open marketplace though. Like Target & Macy’s marketplace, Nordstrom marketplace is a gated & exclusive one. Nordstrom’s internal team will select brands to join it. All brands and sellers need to go through a long process of application and reviews before getting approvals into the third-party sellers.

In recent years, other major retailers, including Macy’s, Walmart, Kohl’s, & Michaels, have created third-party marketplaces. Most of them carefully selected its partners to ensure the satisfaction of customers’ experiences. 

Currently, the brands participating at launch are AdoreMe, Cynthia Rowley, Derek Lam 10 Crosby, Dia & Co, Dippin’ Daisy’s, DXL, Maison de Sabre, Mulberry, Natori and Tracksmith, according to the internal sources.

“By reimagining the way we work with our brand partners, we’ll grow our curated online assortment to serve more customers on even more occasions through increasing our use of unowned inventory,” said CEO Erik Nordstrom on the earnings call. “Marketplace will allow customers to shop more products and sizes from their favorite brands while providing them more access to new and emerging brands.”

The addition of a third-party marketplace has become a common tactic for major department stores including Macy’s, Saks, Kohl’s and Hudson’s Bay to grow their digital share without the expense of holding additional inventory.

The company reported better-than-expected earnings for Q4 2023, which ended Feb. 3, 2024, with net sales increasing 2.2% over the same quarter last year. The increase was driven in particular by the company’s off-price banner Nordstrom Rack, where net sales were up 14.6% over Q4 2022.

The company’s digital business remains strong, accounting for 36% of sales in fiscal 2023. Looking ahead to 2024, however, the company projected a potential decline, which caused Nordstrom shares to take a dive in after-hours trading on Wednesday.

For more information of how to become a seller and sell Nordstrom marketplace, please contact Alan Lee to Alan@amzhongkong for more details of onboarding into it. Masei & Ryland has successfully helped dozens of businesses to sell in Amazon Vendor Central, Target, HomeDepot, Lowe’s, Best Buy and Macy’s through Alan Lee’s consulting and strategy so far. Please feel free to contact Masei & Ryland!