Companies to Watch: The Gap and Nordstroms :: essays research papers fc

     I chose to research two genuinely contrastive apparel retail stores. The suspension, Inc. and Nordstrom, Inc. are very fire companies to me because they deal with something that is very important to me and a mint of people, clothes. Everyone buys and wears clothes, and these are two companies who have succeeded in this venture. They both started out with the same intentions, to sell apparel through specialness stores, but at this point Nordstroms has been more successful.     In possibility these two companies are very similar because they are trying to give the same thing. They both sell apparel, shoes and accessories for women, men and children through posture and clearance stores. The clearance stores mentioned are Nordstrom Rack and suspension factory loss stores. They also stress the use of personalized customer serfeebleness. The curtain raising and Nordstrom heart that good customer service is the way to keep customers happy and therefore keep them loyal. Because of this, they have many employees to serve their customers and spend a lot of time training these employees.     These companies are also set up in the same way. They each have a chairman, president, and a couple of vice presidents. They both operate on the New York Stock Exchange. Another interesting similarity is that they both are based out of the west coast, The GAP in San Francisco and Nordstrom in Seattle. But this is where the similarities end.     The sizes of these two companies are very different. The GAP is a global retailer with about 3,700 stores and 166,000 employees worldwide. Nordstrom on the other ease up has about 77 stores nationwide and 43,000 employees. It does operate one international boutique, Faconnable, princip entirelyy in Europe. The GAP has three brands including GAP, Banana Republic and Old Navy, all operating in their own stores. Because of this huge difference in s ize, the GAP has such(prenominal) higher revenue than Nordstrom, but this doesnt mean that its a better company.     In the news lately, the GAP has been under a lot of scrutiny because its sales have been down so much causing their credit rating to lower as well. Investors feel that this is repayable to the sharp slowdown in consumer spending, growing competition and series of sort misses. It has too many stores open to sustain this major hit on sales. They have very little debt, but analysts think that this combination spells a future bankruptcy.