Neiman Marcus


Neiman Marcus is an American upmarket department store chain founded in 1907 in Dallas, Texas by Herbert Marcus, his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman, and her husband Abraham Lincoln Neiman. The company is known for its luxury merchandise, including its annual offerings for the holiday season, inclusive of its Fantasy gifts. It was owned by the Neiman Marcus Group from 1987 to 2024, which also included Bergdorf Goodman and the clearance outlet Neiman Marcus Last Call, among others. In 2024 it was acquired by Saks Global. As of 2025 Neiman Marcus had 36 stores throughout the United States.

History

1907–1949

Sr., a former buyer with Dallas' Sanger Brothers department store, had left his previous job to found a new business with his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman and her husband, Abraham Lincoln Neiman, then employees of Sanger Brothers competitor A. Harris and Co. In 1907, the trio had from the successful sales-promotion firm they had built in Atlanta, Georgia, and two potential investments of funds. Rather than take a chance on an unknown "sugary soda pop business," the three entrepreneurs rejected the fledgling Coca-Cola company and chose instead to return to Dallas to establish a retail business. For this reason, early company CEO Peb Atera was quoted in 1957 as saying in jest that Neiman Marcus was "founded on bad business judgment." The store, established on September 10, 1907, was lavishly furnished and stocked with clothing of a quality not commonly found in Texas. Within a few weeks, the store's initial inventory, mostly acquired on a buying trip to New York made by Carrie, was completely sold out. Oil-rich Texans, welcoming the opportunity to flaunt their wealth in more sophisticated fashion than was previously possible, flocked to the new store. In spite of the Panic of 1907 set off only a few weeks after its opening, Neiman Marcus was instantly successful, and its first several years of operation were quite profitable.
In 1914, a fire destroyed the Neiman Marcus store and all of its merchandise. A temporary store was opened for 17 days. By the end of 1914, Neiman Marcus opened at its new, permanent location at the corner of Main Street and Ervay Street. With the opening of the flagship Neiman Marcus Building, the store increased its product selection to include accessories, lingerie, and children's clothing, as well as expanding the women's apparel department. In its first year at the new building, Neiman Marcus recorded a profit of $40,000 on sales of $700,000, nearly twice the totals reached in its last year at the original location.
In 1927, the store expanded, and Neiman Marcus premiered the first weekly retail fashion show in the United States. The store staged a show called "One Hundred Years of Texas Fashions" in 1936 in honor of the centennial of Texas's independence from Mexico. A later 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:
In 1929, the store began offering menswear. During the 1930s and 1940s, Neiman Marcus began to include less-expensive clothing lines along with its high-end items, in response to the Great Depression and following war years. Between 1942 and 1944, sales at Neiman Marcus grew from $6 million to $11 million. Despite a major fire in 1946, the store continued to profit.

1950–1999

Herbert Marcus Sr. died in 1950, and Carrie Neiman died two years later, leaving Stanley Marcus in charge of the company's operations.
The 1950s saw the addition of a $1.6 million store at 8300 Preston Road in the Preston Center; the location been occupied by a Tootsies store since the 1990s. It was a store "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 1960s, Gittings operated a portrait studio in Neiman Marcus. Clients included Hope Portocarrero, Lyndon Johnson, Howard Hughes, and the Shah of Iran, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi and his family. A late 1960s Christmas Book featured portraits of Wyatt Cooper, his wife Gloria Vanderbilt, and children Carter and Anderson Cooper.
The company continued its extravagant marketing efforts with the inauguration of Fortnight in 1957. The Fortnight was an annual presentation of fashions and culture from a particular country, held in late October and early November of each year, and was one of the most anticipated events in Dallas. It brought fashion, dignitaries, celebrities, exotic food and extravagant celebrations to the downtown store for 29 years.
In 1955, Neiman Marcus acquired Ben Wolfman, Inc. which operated a 9-story store, The Fashion, in Downtown Houston. Wolfman stayed on to run the store, which became branch of Neiman Marcus, the first store outside the Dallas/Fort Worth Metroplex. The freestanding store was later replaced with a new anchor store located in the Houston Galleria in 1970. In 1965 the Preston Center store was closed and a new store, more than twice as big, was opened at NorthPark Center. Another branch in Fort Worth was also opened. By 1967 the four Neiman Marcus stores in operation were generating annual sales of $58.5 million, and the company's profit for that year was in excess of $2 million. In 1968, the company merged with Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc., which enabled Neiman Marcus to expand at a much faster pace than would have been possible as an independent entity. In 1971, the first Neiman Marcus outside Texas opened in Bal Harbour, Florida. In subsequent years stores opened in over 30 cities across the United States, including Atlanta, Pittsburgh, Charlotte, Beverly Hills, Boston, Chicago, Las Vegas, Minneapolis, San Francisco and St. Louis. Neiman Marcus also had a letter of intent to open a 120,000 square foot store in downtown Cleveland in 1992 as part of an anchor for the upscale Tower City Center. However, the project did not come to fruition, instead opening its concept store in the 1990s. In 1987 Bergdorf Goodman was acquired by the Neiman Marcus Group. In the 1980s, the hyphenated spelling of the company name was abandoned.
Image:Neiman Marcus Boston.jpg|right|thumb|Neiman Marcus in Boston's Copley Place

2000–2010

died on January 22, 2002. He had served as president and chairman of the board for the company. Marcus had been the architect behind the fashion shows, New York advertising for a strictly regional chain, in-store art exhibits, and the Christmas catalog with its outlandish His-and-Hers gifts, including vicuña wool coats, a pair of airplanes, "Noah's Ark", camels, and live tigers.
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, selling itself to two private equity firms, Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus.
The "Neiman-Marcus Collection," comprising early account books, advertising and Christmas Catalog layouts, files on charity activities, past awards and presentations, and a collection of Stanley Marcus's personal memorabilia, among many other items, is located in the Texas & Dallas History & Archives Division, 7th Floor, Main Library, Dallas Public Library, where it may be consulted by researchers.

2010–2019

In August 2013, Women's Wear Daily reported Neiman Marcus Group was preparing for an initial public offering of its stock. In October 2013, the Neiman Marcus Group was sold for $6 billion to Ares Management and the Canada Pension Plan Investment Board. In August 2015, the company again announced it was preparing for an initial public offering. In late 2015 Neiman Marcus became a stand-alone company.
In November 2013 the firm discovered a 25-carat rough diamond off Namibia's coast, which was valued with a reserve price tag of $1.85 million. The diamond was referred to as the "Nam Diamond".
In 2018 Geoffroy van Raemdonck replaced Karen Katz as CEO.
In April 2019, Neiman Marcus acquired a minority stake in Fashionphile, an online resale platform for handbags, jewelry and accessories.

2020–present

Neiman Marcus Group, Ltd. LLC and 23 affiliated debtors filed Chapter 11 bankruptcy in the United States District Court for the Southern District of Texas in May 2020. The debtors requested joint administration of the cases under Case No. 20-32519. According to the company's CEO, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, the filing was a direct result of the COVID-19 pandemic in the United States. The company's website, mytheresa.com, was not part of the bankruptcy.
At the end of September 2020, Neiman Marcus exited Chapter 11 bankruptcy, and as of 2022 is owned by a consortium of investment firms.
In July 2021, mytheresa was spun off and filed for IPO on the NYSE, valuing it at $2.2 billion which increased to $3 billion during the first day of trading.
In August 2020, it announced the closing of six stores: Mazza Gallerie in Washington D.C.; Natick Mall in Natick, MA; Hudson Yards in New York City; The Galleria at Fort Lauderdale; Worth Avenue in Palm Beach, Florida; and Downtown Bellevue near Seattle.
In June 2022, Neiman Marcus Group reported their highest sales volume in almost half of their stores, and sales of their 20 best-selling brands grew by 70% above pre-COVID pandemic levels in 2019. The company has also been attracting younger customers, with the average age falling by seven years from pre-pandemic levels, from the mid-40s to the high-30s.
In December 2024, Neiman Marcus was acquired as part of the $2.7B Neiman Marcus Group acquisition by Saks Global.
In February 2025, Neiman Marcus announced it would close its flagship store in Downtown Dallas on March 31, 2025, after nearly 120 years. After Dallas city officials intervened the store remains open.
In September 2025 it was announced that The Shops at Willow Bend store would close in January 2027.
On January 14, 2026, Saks Global filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection after struggling with heavy debt relying on its acquisition and merger of Neiman Marcus. The company also blamed a rapid consumer shift in luxury goods due to inflating prices.