Nordstrom Finds Fashion and a Competitive Market in Orange County

Friday, October 7, 2005

Ten years ago, the Irvine Spectrum Center was known as a place where people from suburban Orange County could go to find nightlife, what with the Crazy Horse Steak House & Saloon country-western club, the Improv Comedy Club and a 108-foot Ferris wheel doing business at the southernmost edge of Irvine, Calif.

This year, mall owner The Irvine Co. hoped to raise the shopping center’s fashion profile, and on Sept. 28, Nordstrom Inc. held a party to celebrate the opening of a 125,000-square-foot store at the Spectrum. This is the fifth Nordstrom in Orange County. The store is in the middle of a hotly contested territory, where retailers are eager to serve the wealthy consumers of south Orange County.

The Irvine Spectrum Center’s Robinsons-May store will change nameplates and become a Macy’s, for example, and Nordstrom’s top-performing store is located less than 12 miles away in South Coast Plaza. But building a new store could be the best way to find new consumers at little cost to other company stores, said Aubie Goldenberg, a retail analyst at Ernst & Young. “There’s a chance for cannibalization, but there’s also a chance to gain market share for retailers who can expand,” Goldenberg said.

Expansion has been a hot topic for department-store executives since the Federated-May Co. merger, which makes available property from the 26 Robinsons-May stores expected to be shuttered in California next year. Pete Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom’s Full-Line stores and son of Bruce Nordstrom, the company chairman, said his business would probably build 12 more stores in the next few years. “The consolidation created opportunities for us to move into spaces we have not gotten into before,” he said.

A new Nordstrom is a highly anticipated event. More than 1,200 people attended the Sept. 28 gala, which raised money for Orange County charities Laura’s House and CASA of Orange County. Attendees also viewed a runway show at an event tent outside the store. On display were the Fall 2005 fashions of Trina Turk, Rachel Pally, Cynthia Steffe, Rebecca Taylor, Hugo Boss, Robert Rodriguez, Elie Tahari, Nanette Lepore, Diane von Furstenberg, BCBG Max Azria and L.A.M.B.