Neiman Marcus facts for kids
 |
|
Neiman Marcus Building, the main store and headquarters in Downtown Dallas, 2011
|
|
| Private | |
| Industry | Retail |
| Founded | September 10, 1907 in Dallas, Texas, US |
| Founders |
|
| Headquarters | 1618 Main St Dallas, Texas 75201 32°46′50″N 96°47′50″W / 32.7805554°N 96.7973419°W |
|
Number of locations
|
36, not including Last Call locations |
|
Area served
|
United States |
|
Key people
|
|
| Products |
|
| Revenue |  US$4.9 billion (FY2018) |
| US$251.1 million (FY2018) | |
| Total assets | US$7.546 billion (FY2018) |
| Owner |
|
|
Number of employees
|
10,000 (2022) |
| Divisions |
|
Neiman Marcus Group, Inc. is a famous American store that sells expensive and fancy items. Its main office is in Dallas, Texas. The company owns several well-known stores, including Neiman Marcus, Bergdorf Goodman, Horchow, and Last Call. Since 2021, a group of investment companies has owned Neiman Marcus Group.
Contents
History of Neiman Marcus
The Early Years (1907-1949)
,_SE_corner_Elm_at_Murphy,_Dallas,_1913.png)
In 1907, Herbert Marcus Sr. decided to start a new business. He teamed up with his sister, Carrie Marcus Neiman, and her husband, Abraham Lincoln Neiman. They had saved $25,000 from a successful sales company they ran in Atlanta, Georgia. They had two ideas for how to use their money. One was to invest in a new "sugary soda pop business," which was the early Coca-Cola company. But they decided not to! Instead, they chose to go back to Dallas and open a retail store.
On September 10, 1907, their store opened. It was beautifully decorated and filled with high-quality clothing that was hard to find in Texas. Just a few weeks later, almost everything they had bought was sold out! People in Texas who had become rich from oil loved having a place to buy such fancy clothes. Even though there was a money crisis called the Panic of 1907 soon after they opened, Neiman Marcus was an instant success and made good money.
In 1914, a fire destroyed the store and all its goods. But they quickly opened a temporary store for 17 days. By the end of 1914, Neiman Marcus opened a new, permanent store at Main Street and Ervay Street. This new main store, the Neiman Marcus Building, offered even more products. They added accessories, underwear, and children's clothes, and made their women's clothing section bigger. In its first year at the new building, Neiman Marcus made $40,000 in profit from $700,000 in sales. This was almost double what they made at their first location.
In 1927, the store grew even more. Neiman Marcus also started the first weekly fashion show for stores in the United States. In 1936, they held a special fashion show called "One Hundred Years of Texas Fashions." This show celebrated 100 years since Texas became independent from Mexico. A famous editor from Vogue magazine, Edna Woolman Chase, said that Neiman Marcus was "the perfect store for women."
In 1929, the store began selling clothes for men. During the 1930s and 1940s, Neiman Marcus started to sell some less expensive clothes along with their high-end items. This was because of the Great Depression and the war years. Sales grew a lot, from $6 million in 1942 to $11 million in 1944. Even after another big fire in 1946, the store continued to do well.
Growing Bigger (1950-1999)
Herbert Marcus Sr. passed away in 1950, and Carrie Neiman died two years later. This left Stanley Marcus in charge of the company.
In the 1950s, a new $1.6 million store opened in the Preston Center. This store was inspired by the art and culture of Southwestern Native Americans. It had colors from Indian weaving and pottery. Art was very important to Stanley Marcus. He even borrowed 20 paintings by Paul Gauguin from around the world. He then had the bright colors from these paintings made into dyes for fabrics like wool and silk.
From the 1950s to the 1960s, a portrait studio called Gittings was inside Neiman Marcus. Many famous people had their pictures taken there, including Lyndon Johnson and the Shah of Iran.
The company kept doing exciting marketing, like starting "His and Her" gifts in their famous Christmas Book. In 1957, they started "Fortnight." This was an annual event where they showed off fashions and culture from a different country. It happened in late October and early November each year and was a very popular event in Dallas for 29 years. It brought fashion, important people, celebrities, and special food to the downtown store.
In 1955, Neiman Marcus bought Ben Wolfman, Inc., which had a nine-story store in Downtown Houston. This became the first Neiman Marcus store outside of the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. Later, a new store opened in the Houston Galleria in 1970. In 1965, the Preston Center store closed, and a new, much bigger store opened at NorthPark Center. Another store opened in Fort Worth. By 1967, the four Neiman Marcus stores were making $58.5 million in sales each year.
In 1968, the company joined with Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc. This allowed Neiman Marcus to grow much faster. In 1971, the first Neiman Marcus store outside of Texas opened in Bal Harbour, Florida. In the years that followed, stores opened in over 30 cities across the United States, including Atlanta, Beverly Hills, Boston, and San Francisco. In 1987, Bergdorf Goodman became part of the Neiman Marcus Group. In the 1980s, the company stopped using the hyphen in its name, so it became "Neiman Marcus" instead of "Neiman-Marcus."
Modern Times (2000-Present)
Stanley Marcus passed away on January 22, 2002. He had been the president and chairman of the company's board. Stanley Marcus was the one who came up with the fashion shows, advertising in New York for a store that was mostly regional, art exhibits in the stores, and the famous Christmas catalog with its wild "His-and-Hers" gifts. These gifts included very expensive coats, airplanes, and even live tigers!
Over the past 20 years, Neiman Marcus has been owned by different companies. In 1987, it became a public company, meaning its shares could be bought and sold. In 2005, two private investment firms bought Neiman Marcus Group.
The "Neiman-Marcus Collection" is a special group of items kept at the Dallas Public Library. It includes old account books, advertisements, Christmas Catalog designs, and Stanley Marcus's personal items. Researchers can look at these to learn about the company's history.
In 2013, Neiman Marcus Group was sold for $6 billion to Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In 2015, Neiman Marcus became a stand-alone company again.
In 2018, Geoffroy van Raemdonck became the new CEO. In 2019, Neiman Marcus bought a small part of Fashionphile, a website where people can buy and sell used luxury handbags, jewelry, and accessories.
In May 2020, Neiman Marcus Group faced financial challenges and filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. The company's CEO said this was because of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. However, the company's website, mytheresa.com, was not part of the bankruptcy. By September 2020, Neiman Marcus came out of bankruptcy. As of 2022, it is owned by a group of investment firms.
In July 2021, mytheresa.com became its own company and started selling shares on the stock market. In August 2020, Neiman Marcus announced it was closing five stores in different cities.
In June 2022, Neiman Marcus Group reported its highest sales in almost half of its stores. Sales of their 20 best-selling brands grew by 70% compared to before the pandemic in 2019. The company has also been attracting younger customers. The average age of their customers has dropped by seven years, from their mid-40s to their late-30s.
How Neiman Marcus Works Today
Neiman Marcus is still open today under its original name and is still based in Dallas, where it began. The Neiman Marcus Group includes the Neiman Marcus stores and Bergdorf Goodman. These stores sell fancy clothes, accessories, jewelry, beauty products, and home decor. As of mid-2022, the company runs 36 Neiman Marcus stores in the United States and two Bergdorf Goodman stores in Manhattan. The area with the most Neiman Marcus stores is South Florida, where they have five. The company also has five "Last Call" clearance centers and an online store for luxury furniture called Horchow.com.
In 2013, Neiman Marcus agreed to follow federal rules about fur labeling. This happened after tests showed that some products they claimed had fake fur actually had real fur from raccoon dogs. Neiman Marcus did not say they were guilty, but they promised to follow the rules for the next twenty years.
In 2014, Neiman Marcus bought a German online store for luxury fashion called mytheresa.com. This online store ships designer clothes, shoes, bags, and accessories for women all over the world.
In March 2020, Neiman Marcus Group launched an app called NM Connect. This app lets salespeople talk directly with customers using texts, emails, phone calls, and video calls. In June 2021, Neiman Marcus Group bought Stylyze, an online shopping platform, to make their online shopping even better.
In April 2022, Farfetch Limited invested $200 million in the Neiman Marcus Group. This investment aims to help Neiman Marcus grow by using Farfetch's online marketplace tools.
The Christmas Book
Special "His and Hers" and "Fantasy" Gifts
Since 1939, Neiman Marcus has published a special Christmas catalog each year. This catalog often gets a lot of attention from the news because it features very unusual and expensive gifts that are not sold in their regular stores. Some of these have been "his and hers" themed items, special trips, and even cars.
In 1952, Stanley Marcus started the tradition of having extravagant and unique gifts in the annual Christmas catalog, which is called The Christmas Book. The idea came about when a journalist asked if the store would offer anything unusual. Stanley Marcus quickly thought of offering a live Black Angus bull with a sterling silver barbecue cart, priced at $1,925.
Neiman's "fantasy gifts" in the Christmas Book have included a $20 million submarine, cases that contained an actual mummy, seats from a famous baseball stadium, and a $1.5 million special plane. The most expensive item ever offered was a Boeing Business Jet for over $35 million!
Other Christmas Gifts
In 1961, Neiman-Marcus in Dallas was one of the first stores to use computers to help people choose Christmas gifts. The computer would compare information about the person receiving the gift to a list of 2,200 items. Then, it would suggest the 10 best gifts. For example, if someone pretended to be President John F. Kennedy shopping for his wife, Jacqueline Kennedy Onassis, the computer suggested a yacht.
During the Apollo 8 space mission in December 1968, Marilyn Lovell, whose husband Jim Lovell was an astronaut, received a mink coat as a Christmas present. It was delivered by a Neiman Marcus driver in a Rolls-Royce car. The coat was wrapped in royal blue paper with two Styrofoam balls, one for Earth and one for the Moon. The card said, "To Marilyn, from the Man in the Moon."
In 2012, Neiman Marcus worked with Target Corporation to create a holiday collection. This collection featured 24 designers and included 50 different items like clothes, accessories, and even gifts for dogs.
Fun Facts
The Cookie Recipe Story
For a long time, there has been a popular story about Neiman Marcus and a chocolate chip cookie recipe. The rumor says that a woman and her daughter ate a delicious chocolate chip cookie at Neiman Marcus and asked for the recipe. The server said it would cost "two fifty," and the woman agreed. But she was shocked when she was charged $250 instead of $2.50! This story became a famous chain letter and e-mail forward.
In 1997, because the story was so popular, the company officially said that it was just an urban legend. To be nice, the store also gave away a version of their cookie recipe for free to all customers.
|
See also
In Spanish: Neiman Marcus para niños
