Increasing Product, Selection and Representation
Throughout the months of January and February, we've celebrated Black-owned brands and amplified their voices through various merchandise categories in-store and online, including:
New Concept 012: Black_Space, a national platform for designers, creatives and thought leaders across varied perspectives and experiences, representing Black culture. Concept 012 creates a space for representation that is developed, designed, and curated by Black voices.
Center Stage pop-up at NYC Flagship titled Black Founders, which features eight Black-founded and -owned companies from across the country, spanning beauty, men's and women's apparel, accessories, and footwear.
Inclusive Beauty expansion to include 12 new Black founded brands this month to make it easier for customers to find the products that meet their unique needs — no matter skin or hair type, tone, complexion or texture.
While we are excited about these efforts, amplifying diverse voices and brands has long been a part of our culture and extends well beyond Black History Month. We've long believed in the value diversity brings to our company and our communities, and we believe we have a role to play in contributing to the positive change that's needed to address systemic racial inequity. That comes in how we operate as a company, the people we work with and the brands we partner with. However, 2020 required more self-reflection, more listening and more compassion than ever before. It begins with us, and we've set goals for ourselves to address our most pressing opportunities, including delivering $500M in retail sales from brands owned by, operated by or designed by Black and/or Latinx individuals.
"We're committed to improving the diversity of the vendors we partner with across all parts of our business," said Teri Bariquit, chief merchandising officer at Nordstrom. "We're making strong progress to find and support diverse brands and we are very excited to introduce them to our customers. Most importantly, these brands and the products they offer help us meet the diverse needs of our customers, while continuing to create the inspiration and discovery they expect to find when shopping at Nordstrom."
We want to be thoughtful and strategic with each choice we make, putting our customers first and setting up our partners for success. Our work during Black History Month to highlight Black-owned brands is just a small example of the larger work underway to help us hit our goals and more.
What we're doing right now
We are continuing to work with Black owned brands across all categories— beauty, apparel, accessories, shoes and home— as partners to help scale their operations and our offering. We will continue to work with all of the brands featured during this month's activations beyond the month of February in addition to all of our current partners. We also plan to launch additional brands in 2021 as we continue to discover, vet and add to our list of potential future partnerships across our entire business, not just brands.
What we're working toward
While we continue to grow our existing partnerships and offering, we're working to expand the pipeline so there are even more options of partners to work with— in brand partners, vendors and more. Specifically, we are giving our merchants the tools needed to identify, engage with and support smaller and more diverse brands.
We know we have a lot of work still to do but we are excited about all the work currently underway. Check back in here as we continue to update you on our goals and progress towards becoming a more inclusive, anti-racist company.