Retail Confessions: The Nordstrom and Gucci Vet Who Has Seen It All
"When we were doing the opening of the New York store for Nordstrom, one client wanted an Uber Copter to take her into the city from the airport."
Luxury fashion retail veterans can often tell who has real disposable income. “The people who actually have money, who’s cards are never declined, were always so generous, so nice,” recalled a recently retired salesperson who worked for many years at Nordstrom and Gucci on the West Coast. “People who come in and think that that's how they should act, they're the ones who's cards are declined, who would do the snappy fingers and, ‘Where's my champagne?’”
After working through the craziness of the pandemic, this person saw the luxury bubble balloon with stimulus checks and then burst before deciding to take a step back. “You do make a lot of money for a pretty easy, fun job,” they recalled. While they made a lot of great friends along the way and had an overall good experience, the job was taxing. “You kind of get trapped,” they said. “A lot of my friends who have recently escaped, they're in therapy weekly.” Ahead, our full conversation about their experiences selling luxury fashion.
Would people literally snap their fingers at you?
Yeah, mostly men. And during holiday.
Because you get people who are not normally there?
And they think that’s how they should act.
Men also love to lie about their shoe size. They'd be like, “Oh, I'm a twelve.” We'd have to go down to an eight. And I would be like, It's a lot less embarrassing to just fit your size originally than have to try six different pairs of shoes.
Could you tell when they were lying?
Definitely. My boo is not tall, so no shade to the short kings. But if you're five seven, you're not a size twelve.
Did the Gucci and Chanel customers you had at Nordstrom differ greatly?
I'm still really good friends with a lot of my old Chanel clients, and with the obscene price increases, they're just going back into a more YSL, Gucci price point. They’re like, This is outrageous, and I already have 20 classic flaps. They'll get a different bag that's $5,000 or $6,000 instead of the $10,000, $11,000. And they have the money.
So you think there’s a ceiling on the price increases that these brands have been doing?
I do. A lot of people bring up the point that you're buying the same bag. It's not any different or any better. Sure, materials have gone up with inflation, but not at that astronomical rate to justify it, especially when people already have a collection. When I started, a classic flap was around $4,800.
How much would Chanel ready-to-wear customers spend?
With our relationship business, the show would happen, we would get the look book, then we would circle what that client wanted. It was like a reservation business. During Karl Lagerfeld, a lot of that stuff was so thematic. If somebody wasn't into that theme for that collection, they would pull back. Some clients would spend $50,000 to $60,000 on a collection.
And how much would they spend per year?
Annual spend could be $150,000 at Nordstrom, but that's across all categories, all brands. That was obviously top clients. I had people who would shop with me every day that I worked.
We saw big changes in the last year in spend.
Up or down?
Down 40 percent. Gucci, Golden Goose, St. Laurent, Louis Vuitton, across the board, it's down 30 to 40 percent in our market, based on what I saw and conversations I’ve had with other people in retail here.
I thought we were in a moment where there were so many uber-wealthy people that this boom would sustain for a while.
They're not coming into Gucci to buy a canvas GG bag.
So it's more the aspirational client that they’re losing?
I was at Gucci during stimulus checks. I didn't realize that people with kids were getting thousands of dollars. You could really tell when those checks stopped coming. It was a totally different clientele. We were selling a lot of slides, a lot of belts, introductory price points, but we were so busy, the line was out the door every day.
Did those customers strike you as different from the typical people who would come in?
Again, it’s the person who thinks they should act a certain way. One woman came in with six or seven kids and a French bulldog. I love dogs. And she was not paying attention to the kids or the dog. The kids were just running amok. Her dog pooped on the rug in the store. She's like, “My dog pooped.” And I'm like, “Let me get a towel and some spray.” I go to hand it to her, and she literally points at it. She wanted me to clean it up.
So did you clean it up?
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