Nordstrom And Retail’s Growing Urgency To Rethink Performance Metrics

Yesterday, Cowen and Co. retail analyst Oliver Chen downgraded Nordstrom shares, and the stock promptly tumbled. Among the concerns he cited were declining comparable store sales at both Nordstrom’s full-line department stores and the Rack off-price division. There’s a real risk to misunderstanding what is really going on. One of the things were going to need to get used to, not only with Nordstrom but with many other brick-and-mortar-dominant retailers, is a new way of thinking about performance — and much of this has to do with letting go of comparable stores sales as a key indicator while fundamentally thinking differently about the role of physical stores. Read more at Forbes.