Neiman Marcus is a luxury specialty retail department store, operated by the Neiman Marcus Group in the United States. The company is headquartered in Dallas, Texas, and competes with other exclusive department stores such as Barneys New York, Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue. The Neiman Marcus Group also operates the exclusive Bergdorf Goodman specialty retail department stores on Fifth Avenue in New York City and a direct marketing division, Neiman Marcus Direct, which operates catalogue and online operations under the Horchow, Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman names.
History
Herbert Marcus, Sr., a former buyer with Dallas' Sanger Bros. department store, had left his previous job to found a new business with his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman and her husband, A. L. Neiman, then employees of Sanger Brothers competitor A. Harris. In 1907 the trio found themselves with $25,000 from the successful sales-promotion firm they had built in Atlanta, Georgia, and two potential investments into which to invest the funds. Opting to reject the unknown "sugary soda pop business," the three entrepreneurs chose instead to return to Dallas to found a retail business rather than take a chance on the fledgling Coca-Cola company. For this reason, early company CEO Stanley Marcus was quoted in 1957 as saying in jest that Neiman Marcus was "founded on bad business judgment." Thus the store was established on September 10, 1907.
In 1914, a fire destroyed the Neiman Marcus store and its merchandise. A temporary store was set up and opened in just 17 days. By 1914, Neiman Marcus reopened in its new, permanent location, on Main Street, Dallas at Ervay Street. With the opening of this flagship store, Neiman Marcus increased its product selection to include accessories, lingerie, and children's clothing, as well as expanding the women's apparel department. In 1929, it began offering menswear. (The Main Street building, which many now call the 'original' Neiman Marcus, was given state historic landmark status by the Texas Historical Commission in 1982.)
In 1927, Neiman Marcus premiered the first weekly retail fashion show in the United States. The store staged a special show, "One Hundred Years of Texas Fashions," in 1936 in honor of the centennial of Texas' independence from Mexico. A 1957 profile of the store, "Neiman Marcus of Texas," described the "grandiose and elaborate" gala, noting, "It was on this occasion that one of the most critical among the store's guests, Mrs. Edna Woolman Chase, editor of Vogue, expressing the sentiment of the store's starry-eyed clientele, told the local press: 'I dreamed all my life of the perfect store for women. Then I saw Neiman-Marcus, and my dream came true.'"
The 1950s also saw the addition of a $1.6 million store on Preston Road, a 63,000 square foot plant with decor "inspired by the art and culture of Southwestern Indians" and "colors ... copied from Indian weaving, pottery, and sand paintings"; the themed decor included Kachina figures on colored-glass murals and an Alexander Calder mobile named "Mariposa," the Spanish word for butterfly. Art likewise was used as inspiration for Stanley Marcus' seasonal campaigns to solicit new colors in fabrics, as he did the year that he borrowed 20 Paul Gauguin paintings — many of which had never been publicly exhibited — from collectors around the world and had the vivid colors translated into dyes for wool, silk, and leather. Area teachers cited the Gauguin exhibits as spurring a dramatic increase in art study.
In the 1950s and '60s Gittings operated a portrait studio in Neiman Marcus. Clients included Lyndon Johnson, Howard Hughes, and the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family.
In 1957, the first Neiman Marcus outside the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex opened in Houston as a freestanding store and became an anchor in the Houston Galleria in 1970. In 1971, the first Neiman Marcus outside Texas opened in Bal Harbour, Florida. In subsequent years, stores have opened in over 30 cities across the United States, including Chicago, Atlanta, Beverly Hills, San Francisco, St. Louis, Boston, and Las Vegas.
In the late 1990s, the company started a small boutique concept called the "Galleries of Neiman Marcus", which sold jewelry, gifts, and home accessories. The concept struggled and ultimately all three locations, Seattle, Cleveland, and Phoenix, were shuttered. Some believe the locations were wrong and Neiman Marcus officials have hinted the concept might be resurrected. In 1999, neimanmarcus.com, and the store's online gift registry, debuted under the control of Neiman Marcus Group's Neiman Marcus Direct division.
On January 22, 2002, Neiman Marcus and the worldwide fashion community mourned the death of Stanley Marcus, who had served as president and chairman of the board for the company. Marcus had been the architect behind many of the store's most famous innovations, including the fashion shows, New York advertising for a strictly regional chain, in-store art exhibitions, and the Christmas catalog with its outlandish His-and-Hers gifts, including vicuña coats, a pair of airplanes, "Noah's Ark" (including pairs of animals), camels, and live tigers. Long since retired from his chairmanship of the company, Stanley Marcus was nonetheless one of the last remaining ties to its original ownership.
Over the last 20 years, ownership of Neiman Marcus has passed through several hands. In June 1987, the company was spun-off from its retail parent, Carter Hawley Hale Stores, and became a publicly listed company. General Cinema, later to become Harcourt General, still had a roughly 60% controlling interest until 1999, when Neiman Marcus was fully spun-off from its parent company. On May 2, 2005, Neiman Marcus Group was the subject of a leveraged buyout (LBO), selling itself to two private equity firms, Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus.
Neiman Marcus today
Unlike many of its department-store contemporaries, with the notable exception of Nordstrom, Neiman Marcus is still in operation today under the original name and is still headquartered in the city where it began. The Neiman Marcus Group comprises the Specialty Retail stores division — which includes Neiman Marcus Stores and Bergdorf Goodman — Cusp (a contemporary boutique format) and the Direct Marketing division, Neiman Marcus Direct. These retailers offer upscale assortments of apparel, accessories, jewelry, beauty and decorative home products. The company operates 40 Neiman Marcus stores across the United States and two Bergdorf Goodman stores, in Manhattan. Neiman Marcus' largest market is the South Florida MSA, where they operate five stores. The company also operates 20 Last Call clearance centers and three Horchow Finale Furniture Outlets. These store operations total more than five million square feet (500,000 m²) gross. Competitors in the luxury retail segment include Bloomingdale's, Nordstrom, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Barneys New York.
Neiman Marcus Direct, conducts both print catalog and online operations under the Neiman Marcus, Horchow and Bergdorf Goodman brand names. Under the Neiman Marcus brand, Neiman Marcus Direct primarily offers women's apparel, accessories and home furnishings. Horchow offers upscale home furnishings, linens, decorative accessories and tabletop items. They have also launched a new blog outlining the latest news in the fashion world and beyond.
Until recently, The Neiman Marcus Group owned majority interest in Kate Spade LLC, a manufacturer of handbags and accessories. In October 2006, the company purchased all minority interest for approximately $59.4 million, and in November 2006 sold 100% ownership to Liz Claiborne, Inc. for approximately $121.5 million. Another recent divestiture was a majority interest in Gurwitch Products LLC, which manufactures Laura Mercier cosmetics, to Alticor Inc., for approximately $40.8 million.
Neiman Marcus sold its store credit card business to HSBC in mid-2005; however, Neiman Marcus sued HSBC over fees and interest rates in March 2008. The lawsuit was settled in May 2008. Notably, 50% of Neiman's transactions are conducted using their private-label cards due to the fact that Neiman Marcus accepts only its proprietary store credit cards, American Express cards, cash or check for purchases in their retail stores. (However, between fall 2005 and mid-2006, Neiman Marcus briefly tested the acceptance of Visa and MasterCard at a store in Missouri, as well as in several in-store restaurants in California, and Neiman Marcus has accepted all major credit cards for online purchases since their website opened in 1999.)
According to the April 26, 2007 issue of The Wall Street Journal, Neiman Marcus is quietly testing a co-branded credit card issued by HSBC with some of their top customers. The card, which runs on the American Express network was expected to have been rolled out sometime in 2008, but the settled lawsuit between Neiman Marcus and HSBC may have delayed the new co-branded card's full launch.
Since 1939, Neiman Marcus has issued an annual Christmas catalog, which gets much free publicity from the national media for a tradition of unusual and extravagant gifts not otherwise sold in its stores. Some have included the 'his and hers' themed item, trips and cars (see below), to name a few.
The showroom of Neiman Marcus
In the fall of 2004, Neiman Marcu
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