Dive Brief:
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After breaking the hearts of loyal customers when it ended its tradition of two semi-annual sales in 2014 and replacing them with six sales throughout the year, Nordstrom has walked that back a bit.
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The retailer now says that it’s going back to the name “Half-Yearly Sales.”
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But the new policy appears to be unchanged to a certain extent. The department store says it will have two “Half-Yearly Sales” and four “storewide clearance sales.”
Dive Insight:
A rose by any other name would smell as sweet, Shakespeare once wrote — but is this still a rose? Loyal Nordstrom fans will be glad to know that the department store’s big anniversary sale in July hasn’t been touched by all this.
While many said they hated to see the Half-Yearly sale tradition go, the truth was that customers weren’t going. The “half-yearly” sales were actually staggered throughout the year by category, and customers didn't seem to be responding well to that approach, the company says.
Nordstrom has now joined other department stores in having sales during President's Day, Memorial Day, Father's Day, Labor Day, Veteran's Day and the day after Christmas. That does seem a little less special, and it’s not clear that renaming two of those sales will make it so. But then again — every rose has its thorn.