Nordstrom Will Use Pinterest To Decide What Merchandise To Display In Stores

Nordstrom, which has nearly 4.5 million users on the social network, began testing the approach earlier this year.

"Our customers are on Pinterest, so we want to be there too," Bryan Galipeau, social media manager at Nordstrom, told Business Insider. "Pinterest is in many ways the world's biggest wish list-and so it also fits well with our goal of having our merchandise show up in our customer's wish lists."

Popular items on Pinterest will be displayed with a red tag identifying them as popular in the women's shoe and handbag departments of Nordstrom's 117 stores starting today.

Current popular items on Pinterest include a Burberry watch, a leather moto jacket, and a pair of Dolce Vita pumps. Galipeau said the most popular categories on the social network include women's fashion, home, wedding, gifts, beauty, and kids.

The expanded store displays won't be Nordstrom's only attempt to leverage Pinterest, which was recently named the fastest-growing content sharing platform.

The retailer will also debut its holiday catalog on Pinterest first later today.

To aid salespeople, Nordstrom created an in-store app that matches up popular Pinterest items with current inventory for a department on a store-by-store basis.

Galipeau told us that the Pinterest displays in the retailer's stores will be refreshed by associates every week, although the store might update more often if the staff notices a big trend.

"The customer is voting with their pins to tell us what they think is hot - and we're listening closely," Galipeau said. "It's always really exciting to see what they pin."