The encyclopedia · Strategy & Leadership · Strategic decision · 2014–2022
Nordstrom paid $350M for Trunk Club — and sunset it eight years later
Nordstrom bought the styling subscription service in 2014, wrote down $197M of the price in 2016, and shut Trunk Club entirely in May 2022.
Trunk Club · Nordstrom · 2022-05
What happened
Trunk Club had pioneered at-home try-on styling from Chicago since 2009: members received a trunk of clothes chosen by a stylist, kept what they liked, returned the rest. Nordstrom bought the service in 2014 for $350 million, aiming to bolt the subscription habit onto department-store retail.
The price never matched the business. In October 2016 Nordstrom wrote the acquisition down from $350 million to $150 million — a $197 million writedown — saying 'current expectations for future growth and profitability are lower than initial estimates'; founder Brian Spaly left weeks later. Nordstrom kept adjusting: fee structures, store footprint, positioning. None of it made the service profitable.
On 24 May 2022, alongside its quarterly results, Nordstrom announced it would sunset Trunk Club, redirecting resources to its own in-store and online stylists. Eight years after paying $350 million to buy a subscription business, the service was gone and the price largely written off.
Why it happened
- The acquisition priced in a growth curve that styling's unit economics could not deliver.
- A writedown is not a fix: after $197M came off the books, the model still never turned profitable.
- Nordstrom already owned the alternative — its own stylists — which made the acquired service redundant in the end.
The lesson
Nordstrom tried to buy a subscription habit for $350M and spent eight years discovering it could not be made profitable — Trunk Club is proof that a writedown changes the books, not the business.
Aftermath
Nordstrom folded styling back into its own stores and site. Trunk Club remains the textbook overpayment of the apparel-subscription era.
Sources
- Business of Fashion — Nordstrom Is Shuttering Trunk Club (Nordstrom bought the business to update its personal styling but failed to make it profitable; acquired for $350M; in 2016 took a $197M write-down noting 'current expectations for future growth and profitability are lower than initial estimates')
- CNBC, 24 May 2022 — Nordstrom (JWN) reports Q1 2022 losses (Nordstrom announced it plans to sunset its Trunk Club business, a personal styling platform somewhat akin to Stitch Fix acquired in 2014)
- WWD — Why Nordstrom Is Closing All of Its Trunk Club Stores (Nordstrom is 'sunsetting' Trunk Club, the personal styling service acquired in 2014 for $350 million; the retailer said it is redirecting its resources to other services)
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