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.

Donâ€t get too excited yet – Nordstrom Spokesperson Pamela Lopez said a day after the announcement was made that the store will be a thrift shop and will not carry the Nordstrom name, nor will it be Nordstrom-branded. It will be owned by the fashion retailer, but will seem nothing like a typical Nordstrom store to shoppers.

That's not it's name. Nordstrom's Manhattan store won't actually be a Nordstrom

It looks like a lot of the details have yet to be worked out, but the 11,100 square feet of the first and second floors at 350 West Broadway (between Grand and Broome) have been leased to Nordstrom for a shop that donates all of its proceeds to nonprofit organizations. {Racked NY} Nordstrom has never opened a concept store like this before – and as far as we can tell, no other major fashion retailer has ever owned a charity shop.

Lopez told Racked NY the project is something Nordstrom wanted to try based on a general spirit of philanthropy.

Exactly what type of clothing the store will carry and to what charities the profits will go has yet to be decided, but apparently the shop will not even accept Nordstrom credit cards. {The Cut}

A lot of businesses have found great success with cause marketing – or promotions that entice consumers by donating a portion of profits for a particular item to charity – so perhaps Nordstrom is hoping customers will enjoy guilt-free shopping in their thrift store so much that they will stop by regular Nordstrom stores as well. This may backfire, however, if the Nordstrom brand is nowhere to be found in or on the West Broadway store, as less fashion-news conscious consumers may not even know they are in a Nordstrom-owned space.

Because Nordstrom will not be using its name for the store, the retailer may simply be undertaking a purely charitable initiative.

Whatever the folks at Nordstrom intend to accomplish with this new location, they certainly have our attention – especially since we never thought Nordstromâ€s first Manhattan store would be anything other than a massive, long-awaited flagship. Weâ€ll keep you posted as more details arrive.

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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