Dive Brief:

• Nordstrom Chief Technology and Information Officer Edmond Mesrobian is leaving the company Oct. 14, according to a Wednesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
• The department store is searching for his replacement, a company said by email.
• Mesrobian arrived from Tesco in 2018 to fill a spot that had been open for over a year. In 2019 he oversaw a restructuring of Nordstrom’s tech team, which he said at the time would leverage AI to improve the customer experience.

Dive Insight:

Nordstrom has embraced technology as a way to further its “Closer to You strategy,” and Mesrobian is leaving the company with a solid foundation, according to a memo to employees from CEO Erik Nordstrom regarding his departure. 

Over a year ago, the department store said that its digital operations would be in focus as it worked to recover from the challenges of the pandemic and adjust to changing consumer habits.

“We're grateful to Edmond for his leadership and many contributions to our business, employees and customers,” Erik Nordstrom said in the memo, which was emailed to Retail Dive. “He has led a step change improvement in our technology, data and product capabilities, and it's clear that we're in a much better place today than we were before he arrived. He has been a key contributor in building the architecture, infrastructure and resiliency needed for us to be a digital-first company and realize our Closer to You strategy.” 

That remains true despite the closure earlier this year of its Trunk Club apparel subscription service, which like rival Stitch Fix employed algorithms and human stylists to curate boxes of clothing.

Following that move, in a press release detailing Mesrobian’s participation in the Fairchild Live Tech Forum, Nordstrom said that data is now table stakes in fashion retail.

“Data is a prerequisite — knowing as much about the customer as you can is the first step. Now, you have to be able to take that and transform it through AI models that are trained by our stylists,” the company said. “Our stylists play a critical role to train our models, and in turn, those models support our stylists whether they are helping a customer in-store or digitally.”