Living with Diabetes and Lapband

Several years ago, when I was still teaching face – to – face, I had an opportunity to present a robotics workshop, expenses paid.  It let me go to a professional conference I enjoy.  At the time, I had just lost 60 pounds.

I also knew that the way I was dressing wasn’t appropriate for the event.  I wasn’t sure what to do.  I’d been watching What Not to Wear, and new I was wearing it.

I’m also a huge fan of Sunday Morning.  A few months before the conference, they had a segment on how JC Penney’s was changing and in that segment that also talked about Nordstrom’s and why their business model was so successful.  That’s the first time I’d heard of a personal shopper.  I figured it wouldn’t hurt to try and gave them a call.  I also called Macy’s and gave them a try but their quality just wasn’t as good, nor was their tailoring free.

Here’s what I loved about Nordstrom’s – the clothing fit and made me look good.  It also made me feel good.  When things didn’t quite fit, they had a free tailor that fixed them.

I will be honest and went a bit overboard, but they have always taken things back, especially when I ended up not wearing them.

Even better, several years later, I still have that wardrobe and it still fits and it still looks good – I’ve had to have some things taken in.  But that was the personal shoppers plan.  Buy very quality things that fit, make adjustments on the way, and then add to them with quality things.

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However, now I live in their Zella exercise line.  I buy most it on sale.  Again, it fits and makes me look good.  And even in exercise wear, I look like I thought about it before I put it on.

That original wardrobe is working well for dog shows and I’m slowly downsizing it.

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I’ve also had two good customer experiences.  Though the first one was kind of weird.  I needed a new pair of pants for dog shows.  Plain black pants with pockets.  I went through the Encore section and pulled a bunch of pants, then organized them by price in the sales room.  I found a pair that I really liked that were marked with a sale price.  Got the tailor in and got them marked.  Went to pay for them, and the sales lady said they weren’t on sale.  I thought that was really weird at the time, but shrugged and bought them.

Guess what – 21 days later, those pants were on sale at the price I originally bought them.

Called the store and they gave me the store credit.  Yeah, it was luck and I really think they should have been on sale then.

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I had a Clarisonic body brush I really liked.  It came with a handle but it stopped working.  I contacted Clarisonic – they don’t make it any more, and the most they would do was 25% off.  Nordstrom gave me store credit for the last price they sold it for – considerably higher than Clarisonic’ s offer.

So this is why I have Nordstrom’s ads on the website.