While Gilt and Groupon may be top of mind in their categories, here’s another reminder that some very profitable things are happening with brands who have marketshare, even if they don’t lead in mindshare: Hautelook, the flash sales site which launched in December 2007, was just acuiqred by Nordstrom for $270 million. {TechCrunch}

This is mostly a stock deal – $180 million in Nordstrom stock, with a $90 million potential earn-out over the next three years. It’s a smart move for Nordstrom though, and one that we suggested more department stores look into on a guest post at the Business of Fashion last year.

Well, not specifically an acquisition, but certainly a focus on developing the type of online sales websites that are popular with wealthy online shoppers. In this case, an acquisition is likely a better choice than being trying to develop a competing online presence around Nordstrom Rack. Neiman Marcus recently took that route with it’s Last Call brand, but  other department stores like Saks and Barneys continue to keep their discount brands limited to suburban outlets.

While there are sure signs that the luxury market is coming back, the revival is coming from younger, less wealthy shoppers who may be introduced to luxury brands through sites like Hautelook or Gilt that offer items at lower prices. The flash sale sites have often said that consumers introduced to brands through their sites often go on to make additional brand purchases after the sale ends.

For department stores looking to grow revenues, it increasingly just makes good business sense to throw out old thinking that bargain shoppers aren’t as valuable as those who buy at full price. By developing or acquiring online properties that capture a significant part of that audience, they’ll likely find themselves increasing sales at every place in the shopping cycle.

Which stores and websites are we likely to see on future acquisition or partnership press releases? Gilt Group is valued somewhere between $400 million and $500 million making it a more likely candidate for an IPO, RueLaLa was already acquired by GSI commerce for $350 million, which leaves Ideeli and Beyond the Rack as the next largest and most likely targets.

As far as retailers, Saks, Barneys or Macy’s (who owns Bloomingdale’s) are most likely. Macy’s has the money and the traffic to try to develop their own presence, so we’ll take them out of the potential buyer pool; Saks cut a lot of underperforming stores and has decided not to open many more, so developing their own online property is probably not going to happen, but acquiring an already successful one could make sense; finally there’s Barneys, which has had several well publicized staff changes aimed at increasing sales, and online sales have been designated an area of particular importance.

Want to know where the wealthy shop online in the UK? Visit Signature9 UK for a look at the UK shopping sites popular with high earners.

It’s impossible to break out apparel shoppers for department store sites (many of which also sell home and garden items), so it should be noted than not every visitor browsing macys.com is there for clothing, beauty or jewelry items. But even if half of the visitors are there for dresses instead of dishes, Macy’s is attracting one of the largest (and richest) online shopping audiences.

Our data is from Google’s Ad Planner, which only offers visitor and demographic information going back one year. We can’t say if the economy has played a role in shifting online shopping preferences, but presently, wealthy online shoppers aren’t visiting luxury destinations in the same volume as they visit e-commerce sites with mid-level pricing. A possible silver lining for sites specializing in luxury sales: while they may not get the same volume of traffic, it’s quite possible that high end e-commerce sites earn more per sale and visitor.

Of the top 20 apparel e-commerce sites attracting the largest number of wealthy online shoppers, 6 (30%) are sites specializing in discount sales. Gilt and Rue La La are neck and neck for the title of the invitation sale site with the wealthiest visitors. Allowing for a small sampling error, the two sites could even reach the same number of wealthy visitors. The advantage, however, goes to Gilt Groupe, who attracts a combined 1.2 million visitors across the main Gilt site, and recently launched sister (and brother) sites Gilt Fuse and Gilt Man. Combined, Gilt Groupe attracts more visitors earning $100,000 or more than any other online only e-commerce apparel site besides Zappos. Pretty impressive for a company that’s not even 3 years old.

When it comes to visitors earning $100k or more per year, invitation sale sites may not have as many visitors as department stores, but as a percentage of visitors, a sizable portion are in this desirable online shopper demographic.

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While we got some amazing deals at last year’s sales, the deep discounts are a double edged sword. Retailers offer more sales and discounts to stimulate sales, shoppers wait to purchase in hopes of further discounts. And while 70% off is too good to ignore, for the general health of the industry we’ll try to lower discount expectations this year. Interesting to watch will be sites like Gilt, Rue La La and Hautelook, who already offer discounts up to 50% off on designer items every day. Will they take the bargain hunting dollars that department stores and brands are afraid to court?

Where will you be doing your holiday shopping?

Read More {Stylelist}

Read More {Market Watch}

Read More {NY Times}