Case Study: Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook achieves newfound scalability and lower costs for image delivery with Akamai Technologies Image Converter Cloudlet

Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook Gains Newfound Scalability While Lowering Costs by Converting Images in the Cloud

Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook, Nordstrom’s online off‑price division, operates two sites on a single platform and serves millions of shoppers with thousands of product images daily. Because visual detail is essential—especially with two‑thirds of customers on mobile—the company struggled with an internally built image‑resizing system that was costly to maintain and couldn’t reliably scale for daily peak traffic (sometimes 10x off‑peak).

HauteLook implemented Akamai’s Image Converter Cloudlet to perform just‑in‑time image manipulation at the edge, deploying within days and offloading on‑premises infrastructure. The solution delivered device‑aware resizing (retina vs. low‑bandwidth), predictable costs, seamless scaling for traffic surges, repurposed data‑center resources, protected sales, and freed engineering to focus on new features.

Nordstromrack.com | HauteLook

Herman Radtke

VP of Engineering