Trunk Club is ranked No. 504 among online retailers in North America with an estimated $21 million in 2013 online sales. Nordstrom says the acquisition is part of its strategy of better melding offline and online shopping.

Upscale department store chain Nordstrom Inc. today announced plans to buy Trunk Club, an online retailer that sends monthly shipments of high-end casual clothes to men.

Trunk Club is No. 504 in the Internet Retailer Second 500, with 2013 online sales of $21 million, according to an Internet Retailer estimate.

The web-only retailer, which launched in 2009, operates as a monthly membership program. Consumers, via e-mail, Skype or phone, send their fashion preferences to stylists, and then receive monthly shipments, or trunks, of clothing personally selected for them. They keep the items they like and send back the ones they don’t—shipping is free both ways. The retailer recently opened showrooms in Chicago, Dallas and Washington, D.C., and will open a Los Angeles location later this year.

“What Trunk Club is doing in the personal styling space is a natural extension of our core business,” says Erik Nordstrom, president of Nordstrom Direct. “This acquisition is reflective of how we want to move quickly to evolve with customers by finding more ways to deliver a great shopping experience. One of the pillars of our long-term growth strategy is to integrate the online and offline customer experience, and the personal styling space is a great example of how these two worlds are coming together.”

Trunk Club will operate independently and retain its current leadership team. The headquarters will remain in Chicago.

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“Nordstrom is stellar at many of the things we aim to improve on to offer our members the best possible service: inventory management, planning and logistics are great examples,” Trunk Club CEO Brian Spaly says. “We knew that a partnership with the best-in-class retailer could significantly enhance our member experience and we are excited to have found a company that is such a natural fit with our culture and approach to customer experience.”

Terms of the deal were not disclosed, but Nordstrom will release more information during its upcoming earnings conference call on Aug. 14. Nordstrom is No. 24 in the Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide.  

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