Coined and trademarked “Webfront,” this is nau’s physical but revolutionary concept of integrating ecommerce with traditional bricks and mortar.

Their business model is destined for a college textbook. Their management style and structure is what great books are written on. The vision it took to figure all of this out is what sought after lecturers are paid the big big bucks for. And it’s what all of us have been looking for even if we don’t know it yet. With only 4 physical locations as of this moment (there are 10 more scheduled for this year), it will take some of us a while longer to be able to take in the whole experience nau has to offer. Until then, we have only to visit their online shop, www.nau.com, to peruse, learn, shop and even share by contributing to their blog, the thought kitchen, to know we’ve come across the real deal…and an answer to the 21st century’s debate on, well, just about everything having to do with creating, buying and selling goods.

It’s a brilliant concept that has been extremely well executed and hits every button that the globe has been thinking about and grappling with to figure out the solution to for at least the last decade and yet to succeed at making happen, until nau that is.

What am I talking about? What am I falling all over myself to get out here? It’s only the solution to how to blend the traditional bricks and mortar retail business model with that of the internet online shop. And nau (pronounced now, if you haven’t figured it out yet) has even trademarked a name for it….no longer referred to as storefronts and consistent with throwing out the traditional bricks and mortar business model , a byproduct of inventing the successful combination of ecommerce and bricks and mortar, their physical locations are dubbed and referred to as “webfronts.” Get used to it, cause it’s how we will all come to understand shopping for at least the next 40-50 years….I’d stake everything I know, am, and understand industry to be on that prediction. Not because that’s what nau set out to do– tell the world how to do it…that is not their style. No, they just figured out how to do it and then did it, simple as that.

nau’s founder, Eric Reynolds, based the concept on 3 primary principles…First,that their business model be based on distribution of a niche outdoor apparel line to be sold directly to only their website and their own stores while all product was to be made of sustainable materials and therefore showing a heightened and active concern and respect for the environment, and secondly by recognizing that the internet and the customer have changed consumer buying behavior, they work to integrate the concepts of bricks and mortar with online retailing. A third and final principle, the company give back to the community at large and consistently. By employing all of these principles the result is a more efficient, lower overhead, reduced footprint organization that engages its customers from the moment they first hear about nau to well beyond the purchase of the product, be it online at home or at one of their webfronts or a combination of the two.

That type of creative thinking is what the world, or at least the retailing industry, has at long last been looking for but has yet to produce, like I said, until nau. It doesn’t stop there though, with just a revolutionary concept. The real brilliance of this type of conceptual thinking is knowing that yes, it also has to be executed, and Reynolds, realizing he wasn’t the one to execute, set out to find the perfect leadership to do so and found it in a strategicallly thought out choice to hire leadership of very seasoned professionals…who he found (all from the ranks of Nike and Patagonia); call it the Original Seven, Reynold’s Dreamteam, whatever….they have thought organized this company, this revolution into something that works, has a heartbeat, attracts and keeps loyal customers because the “shopping experience” is such that they’ve never had before but in their dreams, until nau. From inception to infinity and beyond…success is embedded in the very nature of the beast.

Center column is nau’s trademark “information tree,” which allows customers to bring scanned cards of their item of interest from the store to research further at nau’s website. The image below shows nau’s trademark “shop to units” which allow customers to purchase whatever nau product they want and have it shipped directly to their home address or any other recipients address. A customer’s incentive for doing so is a 10% discount and free shipping plus the knowledge that by doing so they have just interactively helped to create a retail business’ smaller footprint by keeping its inventory and overhead lower and with that cost savings to “host” company, nau, they pick whatever charity they want their (unprecented) 5% of sales to go to from nau’s list of environmental, social, humanitarian, local, or international non-profits (the back wall of the webfront (shown above) is termed “the Giving Wall”) .

nau’s “shop-to-units” are part of their “webfront” strategy.

Ian Yolles, nau’s VP of Communications and part of the original Dreamteam, says every employee at nau demonstrates that same level of committment and passion towards the core principles its founder Reynolds set out to create, from the original thought leadership down to the level of excitement the webfront sales associates exude when a customer enters their door. Mikie Herman, nau’s VP of Webfronts and arriving at nau from that other historic retail phenom, Starbucks, says the only issue is that the associates don’t overwhelm the customer with their excitement about the process nau has invented. Much like what I have probably done here….

Oh, and we get to wear some pretty awesome clothing while we are at it.

The Chrysalis Dress. Take a sneak peek at Nau’s Spring ‘08 collection. “>.

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