The retail trade press suggested August for it last month, and now Nordstrom web site does not list an actual date expected for the sale. Anniversary Sale discounts a swath of new fall merchandise for a brief window in the retail doldrums of summer.
But you can't have Anniversary Sale without the full-line stores. The point of the sale is to lure in customers to do their fall shopping ahead of the back-to-school window, to buy the special items, but also (especially!) to pay full-price for many others. You've got to complete the look.
This does not work in an online-only environment. Customers will show up, buy up the sale merch, qualify for free-shipping, and disappear, leaving lousy margins in their wake.
The stores have to open first. And who knows what the logistical problems are like now getting the coolie-labor apparel out of SEA. Nordstrom has cut their orders from vendors, so now there is a chicken-egg problem about how to get the great retail machine running again. I need to get on the Board so I can be privy to these tense discussions.
Plus the public is broke. Just wait until even the "wealthy" ones discover their real-estate is worth only a quarter of what they had thought.
With a six-month (?) lead time, Nordstrom should have negotiated the sales buys long ago, it's possible that some of it is sitting in the distribution centers. I have no idea.
So will we have an Anniversary Sale this year? What do you think?