Trunk Club
The business, the turning points, and the decisions behind them.
01 / WHAT IT BUILT
What the company did
Trunk Club was a Chicago personal styling service founded in 2010: a stylist curated a trunk of clothing and accessories to the customers taste and shipped it to their home; customers kept what they liked and sent the rest back. It later added a womens line and opened styling clubhouses. Nordstrom acquired it in 2014 for $350 million as apparel subscription boxes were gaining traction.
02 / Trunk Club FAILURE REASONS
Failure reasons
Trunk Club never became a durable growth engine inside Nordstrom. Three years after the $350 million acquisition, Nordstrom took a $197 million goodwill write-down on the business after lowering its profitability expectations. The standalone model could not sustain itself as apparel subscription growth stalled across the industry; Nordstrom closed Trunk Clubs clubhouses in 2020 and folded styling into its own stores. In May 2022 the company sunset the Trunk Club brand and redirected customers to its in-house styling services.
03 / EVENT HISTORY
Events in the structured record
- Company founded
Trunk Club is founded in Chicago as a personal styling and clothing-trunk delivery service.
- Acquisition
Nordstrom acquires Trunk Club for $350 million.
- Peak funding round
Nordstrom records a $197 million write-down on Trunk Club after cutting its profitability expectations.
- Closure announced
Nordstrom sunsets the Trunk Club brand in May 2022 and moves styling into its own stores and digital services.
04 / CONTEMPORARY REBUILD ASSESSMENT
Difficulty of rebuilding this project today
Material for this section is being gathered and checked. It will appear here once ready.
Overall assessment: Not completed
05 / CAUSAL CHAIN
How the factors connect
- 01
Personal styling trunks shipped to customers homes
- 02
Acquired by Nordstrom for $350M in 2014
- 03
$197M write-down as profitability expectations fell
- 04
Brand sunset in May 2022