The Clifton Review

The Clifton Review is a tri-weekly column that examines the question of the Clifton project along with the evolution of the war between two billionaires. We covered the start of this war with articles describing the battle over easement rights, the mysterious burning of a home, the blocks to rebuilding, and countless questionable court filings.

The 2018 series salutes fashion mogul Peter Nygard’s Golden Jubilee detailing his rags to riches story and incredible business success over these past fifty years. The Clifton Review will take an inside look at how he did it.

Successful Strategic Moves

By P.J. Malone

In this 2018 series saluting fashion mogul Peter Nygard’s fifty years of success, we have discovered a number of strategies and steps that he took to take his business from 800 thousand dollars to 800 million dollars.

In taking an inside look at his success, we have outlined several related factors and continue to share our discoveries.

When Peter Nygard was 16 years old, he spent the summer working at the same factory as his mom. Workers were given salt tablets so that they wouldn’t faint from the heat. He swore he would never let his mom work that way again.

In 1974, Peter Nygard was the first to institute air conditioned sewing rooms in his Winnipeg facilities in Canada. The NYGÅRD Winnipeg facilities were models that the Canadian Government held up for manufacturing companies to follow in the setup of their factories.

Theses facilities were the first to go from cutting fabric manually to using a computerized cutting machine. Gerber cutting machines were purchased for both NYGÅRD’s Inkster and Notre Dame facilities in Winnipeg. This Gerber cutting machine is calibrated to use 100% of the fabric by inputting information into a computer, which identifies the best way to use the fabric before cutting. Canadian Government officials came to tour the Inkster facility to view its technological implementations.

Besides Nygard’s technological improvements, he made other strategic moves. In the late ‘80s early ‘90s, he recognized that there was a move among many major retailers to start shifting from polyester products.

Being the king of Polyester, this created a dilemma for him: He had a very loyal customer base and he did not want to lose them by making such dramatic shifts in product.

Nygard decided to open his own retail stores so he could continue to meet the needs of his customers and also balance any loss of product placement space within department stores. He explained to his department store partners that the focus of these stores was not to compete with them, but to act like a test tube for new product ideas and discover more about their customers and their desires.

Nygard ensured that he did not compete with them with store locations and pricing and was able to develop a long-lasting trusted relationship with all of his retail partners as a result. To date, NYGÅRD has almost two hundred retail stores all over Canada as well as one in Nassau, Bahamas and another in Times Square in New York.

One of the strategies that Nygard has instituted throughout his stores involves programs geared toward making customers feel special. It includes several VIP events that cater to their customers. While NYGÅRD is a national chain store, they operate like a small business. They know their customers in the area. Associates know customers’ sizes, their likes and their dislikes, and customers know all of the Associates by name.

Nygard also instituted kiosks in the stores to be able to order another size or colour for customers if it wasn’t available in the store. This was established a number of years before others started doing it.

These various strategic moves contributed to Peter Nygard’s success.