Nordstrom Partners With The Folklore Group to Connect With Black-Owned Brands

In 2020, Nordstrom, one of the biggest fashion retailers in the United States, set itself a five-year goal to improve and diversify its product offering, making a commitment to deliver $500 million in retail sales from Black-owned brands and designers of color by 2025. Today, The Folklore Group is pleased to announce its new partnership with Nordstrom as the retailer continues to fulfill its goals.

Nordstrom is one of the largest retailers to partner with The Folklore Group, and this partnership is one of many steps Nordstrom is taking in support of its commitment to build a more equitable marketplace and reduce barriers to access for diverse suppliers. Through The Folklore Connect’s wholesale marketplace, Nordstrom will have the tools to identify and engage with fashion and lifestyle brands founded by Black, Latinx, Asian, and other people of color, as well as brands located in emerging markets. Nordstrom will also invite its brand partners to join The Folklore Connect for increased visibility within the industry.

More and more retail companies, such as Nordstrom, are very aware of the impact they can make in appealing to a wide range of customers, by offering stylish products from diverse suppliers, which includes Black-owned brands and designers of color. This way, retailers can serve their customers through an anti-racism lens that promotes equity and inclusivity.

“Nordstrom has a long history of curating new and emerging brands to offer an ever evolving and relevant product assortment for our customers. They expect that we deliver a sense of inspiration and discovery with high-quality products from diverse brands,” said Brian Roberts, Vice President of Brand Programs at Nordstrom. “We are grateful for our partnership with The Folklore Group, which provides us with additional resources to discover and connect with new-to-Nordstrom brands in support of our ambitions to address marketplace equity.”

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Since it was founded in 2018, The Folklore’s mission has been rooted in empowering diverse brands in emerging markets to be discovered on a global stage. In 2022, The Folklore Group launched The Folklore Connect to provide software for diverse and sustainable brands to manage and scale their wholesale businesses, and retailers with a marketplace to discover and shop these brands who have historically been geographically or racially marginalized from connecting with global retailers. Currently, the expanding Connect platform has more than 100 brands such as ASHYA, Nalebe and Vavvoune, which are all available at Nordstrom.com.

“As a lifelong Nordstrom customer, I have long admired and shopped their incredible curation of products, and I’m excited to be teaming up with the legacy retailer in their ongoing commitment to supplier diversity,” says Amira Rasool, Founder and CEO of The Folklore Group. “The Folklore Connect partnership with Nordstrom will now allow their incredible buying team to connect with even more diverse brands from around the world and give customers an experience to shop fantastic brands they could not easily access online or in stores.”

Since setting ambitious targets to improve and diversify its product assortment in 2020, Nordstrom has taken steps towards its goals. In 2021, as part of its Supplier Diversity Program, Nordstrom added 145 new Black-owned and Latinx-owned brands to its roster. In the same year, Nordstrom also made a commitment to growing its purchases from businesses owned or founded by Black individuals tenfold by the end of 2030. In 2022, Nordstrom made progress toward these goals reaching $247 million in retail sales. Today, its customers can shop more than 250 brands in Black- and Latinx-owned and founded categories.