By Christine Kern, contributing writer
Nieman Marcus filed paperwork to go public with an IPO recently, and the paperwork has revealed plans to digitize, with a clear dedication to an omnichannel strategy that melds the traditional brick-and-mortar power with emerging ecommerce strengths, according to Digiday.
Neiman’s S-1 filing says that three-quarters of its revenues are digitally influenced, and 24 percent of the $4.8 billion sold in 2014 resulted directly from online and mobile sales.
Many department stores have been challenged to adapt to digital customers like the millennials, but Nieman Marcus has remained ahead-of –the-curve in the omnichannel world. The retailer has already introduced a mobile app, beacon technologies, in-store pickup of online orders, and has even created an innovation lab dedicated to leveraging omnichannel strategies to boost brick-and-mortar sales.
While the average customer is 51 years old, Neiman Marcus has used social media to attract a younger clientele with 1.2 million followers across the major platforms.
The retailer has also changed its marketing, merchandising and planning, and customer experience efforts, erasing the divisions between online and offline tactics, while also creating a new entity for social media, breaking it out from the PR department.
“Neiman Marcus has always planned for the long term, and they’ve been able to put aside concerns about short-term sales,” brand strategist David Melancon told Digiday. “Going to the public market, are they still going to be able to do that? There are a lot of pressures on a public company, but a retailer will have to keep investing in innovation because it’s long term. At Neiman, they’ve always invested a lot in understanding their customer.”
Neiman Marcus is one of the "smartest companies" going digital, according to branding consultant David Melancon, who explained that the company has been migrating from a legacy luxury brand to an omnichannel retailer for a long time now by looking internally to obliterate departmental divisions between online and off. "Our customers do not differentiate between channels, and now neither will we," said president Karen Katz in a statement.
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