Romaine Bostick

You know, my dream, I think for both our brand partners and our customers to be the destination when you come to New York, but also our local stores in the different regions.

It's really to be the destination.

My secret dream is actually when customers on Saturday noon close the door of their house, the first thing that actually they think about is actually coming to Bloomingdale's.

Whether they spend or not, just spending time, enjoying being there, connecting with people, seeing new things, newness, finding a small product, a big product, but just being astonished by what's happening, that's what I would love people to feel.

Yeah, I'm absolutely convinced about that.

You know, it's not because we're living in a digital world that actually people will stay in their home, not leaving their house and just being on their couch, on their sofa with their computer.

I think people need connection, they need relationship, even more than before.

Now that we have these digital devices and all these social medias, etc., I think people seek for relationship.

And this is what we're refocusing on right now, is bringing experiences.

Not only great products, but really bringing experiences that create the conditions of relationship.

People want to connect, and we want them to connect at Bloomingdale's.

You know, Roman, historically, I think over the past probably 30 years, I think particularly U.S.

department stores probably lost a bit their DNA and probably, you know, the strategy of the department stores and the strategy of the brands probably diverged a bit.

Our goal right now is to bring them back together and realign the strategy of the brand and the strategy of the department store.

what does that mean it means that actually the brands invested a lot not only on products and newness but on experiences storytelling marketing branding and we were obsessed about you know optimizing our financial model about investing in digital investing in data i think we have to bring back these experiences to the customer we want to cascade this brand storytelling to our customers

This is why we need to invest in our stores.

This is why we need to give space to our brand partners.

This is why we have to keep bringing innovation and newness in our stores to keep the excitement going on.

You know, I'm actually cautiously optimistic.

The trend over the past few months has been amazing at Bloomingdale's, so we feel pretty strong.