Neiman Marcus: A Story of Excellence as Big as Texas
Neiman Marcus: A Story of Excellence as Big as Texas
Note from the author
This is the first long post focusing on an achievement originating from Texas.1
I picked Neiman Marcus because the story of “the Store” is one of tremendous achievement: the creation by three young, ambitious people of a business that revolutionized fashion in early 20th-century Dallas, set the bar very high for customer service and excellence, and went through fires and economic crises and still lasted more than 100 years and counting. But to the author of Achievement, TX, it is also a nod to my origin, as Vogue once described Neiman Marcus as “Texas with a French Accent.” I am seriously thinking about stealing this to make it my nickname 😊
The story of Neiman Marcus has proved even more fascinating than I expected. For this reason, I will dedicate a second, separate article to Stanley Marcus specifically because there is much more to say about his time running the company and about himself. Notably, he has published a variety of commentaries (Viewpoints), including some on salesmanship, businesses, and the role of regulation.
Achievement, TX, will not limit itself to stories of achievement from times past. Those stories are important and must be told here and elsewhere, as they have made and continue to make Texas, Texas. However, I also aim to interview achievers whose stories are being built, as they represent the future of Texas.
This is the first example of what I will strive to bring you in the future: stories of achievement, with a focus on the values sought and reached by the achievers, the virtues they demonstrated to create this story for themselves and those around them, and how it makes Texas, Texas. Feedback is welcome!
Overview
September 10, 1907 – Dallas, Texas (population: ~43,000). The North Texas town is a world leader in inland cotton and cotton gin manufacturing. The town is growing, but some streets remain unpaved, and transportation means horse-drawn carriage. Saloons and red-light districts are part of the scenery. Nothing seems to indicate that Dallas is on the verge of becoming a fashion trendsetter that will attract the likes of Coco Chanel and Christian Dior just a few decades later.
Herbert Marcus, his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman, and her husband Abraham Lincoln “Al” Neiman have just returned from Georgia after successfully selling a two-year-old promotion business for $25,000—which they favored over the opportunity to own the franchise licensing for a new and still relatively unknown product named Coca Cola. They have a dream: opening a women’s fine clothing store that will offer the best quality and service in town. The cash payment will help them do just that.
All three were not originally from Texas, but they created one of Texas’ most impressive success stories of the 20th century: Neiman-Marcus. [The store’s name was hyphenated for its first 80 years. I will use the hyphenated version since I will refer to the time before it lost its hyphen.]
Herbert and Carrie Marcus were born in Louisville, Kentucky, in 1878 and 1883, respectively. In the early 1890s, the Marcus family moved to Hillsboro, Texas (southwest of Dallas). Herbert and Carrie’s father, Jacob, hoped to be as successful there as one of his cousins, a cotton broken, for “Texas seemed ripe with opportunity for a man with ambition” (A Girl Named Carrie, p. 36).
According to her great-niece, Jerrie Marcus Smith, Carrie became interested in art and fashion very early. In the meantime, Herbert, eager to start working, dropped out of high school and left for Dallas in 1899. He found a job selling shoes at Sanger Brothers, and his ability as a salesperson quickly got him promoted. Carrie joined him a couple of years later and found a job at the specialty store A. Harris & Co. She was quickly promoted as well, and her pay increased as she proved to have refined taste and to be an excellent salesperson.
Al Neiman was born in Pittsburgh in 1875 and grew up in an Ohio orphanage. He ran a profitable sales business when he met Carrie in the 1900s. They got married in 1905.
On September 10, 1907, Neiman-Marcus opened its doors at the corner of Elm St and N. Field St, downtown Dallas. Many prognosticated failure. However, the store quickly became a tremendous success, confirming the three founders’ intuition about women’s clothing needs and rewarding their commitment to excellence and quality, flair for fashion, and exceptional salesmanship and sense of marketing. The store was successful from the beginning and continuously grew despite going through the Panic of 1907, just one month after its opening; a fire that would destroy the entire store less than six years later, in 1913; the First World War; the Crash of 1929; the Great Depression; the Second World War; and another major fire in 1964.
For the next 20 years, the three would grow the business to make it the place to seek fashion advice for women in Dallas—and beyond. In the second part of the 1920s, Herbert Marcus’ first son, Harold Stanley Marcus, joined the business. A new era of growth started for the store, despite the Great Depression and World War II, thanks in part to Stanley Marcus’ ability to generate publicity for the store and his talent for promotion that put both the store and the city of Dallas on the map not just for the rest of the United States, but for the world as well. In the late 20s, Al Neiman left the partnership, and he and Carrie divorced shortly after.
Herbert and Carrie continued to work until the end of their life (at age 72 in 1950, and 69 in 1953, respectively), always available to attend to and help customers in the store. In 1950, Stanley became CEO after his father died, helped by his three brothers, who had joined the family business progressively. The two periods represent different ways the store grew and was managed. Still, both exemplify similar values the family members were seeking in creating and growing the store, and similar virtues that helped them make the family business successful, both of which we are about to review as we look in more detail at the story of Neiman-Marcus, the Dallas store that revolutionized fashion in America.
Values: Excellence, Customer Satisfaction, Ambition, Innovation, Family/Community.
Virtues: High Expectations, Taste, Extreme Attention to Detail, Uncompromising, Flawless Customer Service, Hard Work, Confidence, Determination, Grit.
Excellence
One of the two most important values that Herbert, Carrie, and Al focused on from the beginning was excellence (and, by extension, quality), which would be their guidepost, as well as Herbert’s son Stanley’s, for all decisions they made throughout the history of the store. To commit to excellence, they:
- Set very high expectations for themselves and their employees.
- Had an innate or developed impeccable taste.
- Paid extreme attention to detail.
- Refused to compromise in their decisions, despite setbacks.
The Store’s Mission and its First Advertisement: Setting High Expectations
The trio of founders had worked in the clothing industry before starting their business. Herbert had worked at Sanger Brothers, a dry-goods wholesale and retail store. Carrie had worked at A. Harris & Co., a specialty store. Both stores were among the biggest Dallas department stores at the time—and would be competitors.
“It took courage to come into the same town dominated by Sanger Brothers. But courage they didn't lack, nor were they bashful or overly modest in their evaluation of their own standards of good taste and fashion.” (Minding the Store, p. 5)
The three ambitious founders set the bar high to compete with these department stores. Their store opened selling not only the finest, highest-quality women’s clothing, but it also made it possible for a broader community of women, not just the richest ones, to be clothed with style, by offering quality ready-to-wear clothing at various prices and providing adjustments individually—a departure from the custom-made tradition of the time.
In the store’s full-page first advertisement in the Dallas Morning News, two days before the opening, Al Neiman wrote:
“As well as the Store of Fashions we will be known as the Store of Quality and Superior Values.
We shall be hypercritical in our selections. Only the finest productions of the best garment makers are good enough for us. Every article of apparel shown will bear evidence, in its touches of exclusiveness, in its chic and grace and splendid finish, to the cleverest designing and the most skillful and thorough workmanship.”
Buying the Best, Finest Merchandise: Taste and Attention to Detail
On top of the $25,000 that the three received for selling their successful business in Georgia, Herbert and Carrie reached out for help to family members who invested in the store, eventually allowing them to start with about $50,000. According to Jerrie Marcus Smith, $12,000 was spent furnishing the store, and $9,000 was paid in rent. With $17,000 left, Carrie Marcus Neiman went to New York to buy the finest ready-to-wear clothes to sell at the Neiman-Marcus store. “Within a month of Neiman Marcu’s opening,” Jerrie wrote, “the entire stock of merchandise had sold out” (A Girl Named Carrie, p. 61).
In his book Merchant Princes, the grandson of one of A. Harris & Company’s founders, Leon Harris, lamented that his grandfather did not retain Carrie as an employee and described her time in his grandfather’s store in the following terms:
“There she revealed a sure sense of fashion not only extraordinary for an uneducated and untraveled woman not yet twenty, but one never equaled either by her brother or her nephew Stanley and not surpassed by any other American retailer.” (p. 161)
Jerrie Marcus Smith explained that Carrie read a lot of European newspapers, which helped her learn about European fashion. But when it came time to buy, she did not necessarily follow trends, trusting her own judgment instead.
“Instead of relying on the tried and true, Carrie courageously bought the newest and most sophisticated styles, paying special attention to fine fabrics, clean lines and superb workmanship. She saw her salary more than double, to $25 a week, making her one of the highest paid women in Dallas.” (A Girl Named Carrie, pp. 41, 43)
In his autobiography Minding the Store, Stanley Marcus described Carrie as “an extraordinary woman”:
“She possessed a queenly quality which she carried as if to the manner born. She and my father were born with an appreciation for beauty and fine quality. They were both perfectionists early in their lives, and concurred with Oscar Wilde’s declaration, ‘I have the simplest tastes. I am easily satisfied with the best.’” (p. 10)
Carrie had an innate skill for discerning the most stylish fashion and predicting what would soon be in style—even though she insisted that nobody could predict fashion, not even herself. This demonstrated a balance between confidence in her capacity and modesty.
She didn’t hesitate to make bold choices in her selection for Neiman-Marcus either and to go against trends if she felt those were mistaken. In the years to come, she would continue to shop for clothes in New York, but also in Paris and London, bringing to the then-still little town of Dallas clothes and styles that were unseen outside of New York in the United States.
Neiman-Marcus also developed excellent relations with its manufacturers. Indeed, Carrie would often request adjustments in what fabric or button to use, the nuance of a garment’s color, or other details, if she thought the clothes she was looking at were not perfect. Manufacturers learned with experience that she was always right and agreed to make the changes to their products, even if it cost them more per unit, knowing that both would benefit from her requests.
Neiman-Marcus understood the win-win relationship between manufacturers and retailers and insisted on treating its manufacturers fairly. In the documentary The Store, Stanley says that many retail buyers are “unethical and unfair” with their manufacturers and “promise them the moon and deliver nothing.” Not so with Neiman-Marcus, which understood that, one day, retailers might need manufacturers for a special order—and the good or bad treatment would be reciprocal.
Herbert, Carrie, and Al were perfectionists. An anecdote related to the store’s opening demonstrates their commitment to excellence in a funny way.
In Minding the Store, Stanley relates that in its first advertisement, the store promised visitors on the opening day “a handsome Souvenir … worthy of the offerings of the new store.” But he adds that later, the founders recognized that the gift was “pure kitsch, causing them no end of embarrassment.” (p. 6)
Uncompromising on Quality in Good and Hard Times
The store went through several events that could have terminated its success and shut its doors, not the least of which was the Great Depression, which led to many stores having to close. Tolbert quotes the then-store general manager, Robert Allen Ross, recalling Herbert explaining at that time:
“We're going to keep on buying more than we sell. We've got to help keep afloat the manufacturers who make our fine goods. And we have an obligation to our customers not to buy inferior goods. So we're going to keep right on buying just like things were normal even though we lose money by the thousands.” (Neiman-Marcus, Texas, pp. 69-70)
At that time, to face a diminishing demand for goods in general that fewer people could afford, many stores decided to take a shortcut and cut on quality. Not so with Neiman-Marcus, which insisted on keeping its high standards of quality, even if that meant the store had to tighten its belt—so to speak—in other ways. In Minding the Store, Stanley recalled that salaries, first of executives and then of employees, had to be reduced after sales declined.
Again, competitors predicted failure, but the founders’ decision paid off eventually: Neiman-Marcus would make a loss only two years during the Great Depression but “ended 1936 with a record volume of sales of $4,500,000, a net profit of a quarter of a million dollars, and an increase of 105% in the number of charge accounts as compared to the number at the beginning of the Depression” (Minding the Store, p. 76).
The argument has been that the Marcuses (Al left the business in 1928) favored quality and service over profits—competitors argued that they could have made much more money during the Great Depression by compromising on quality—but this is missing an important point. Most likely, Herbert was also thinking of long-term sustainability—and profits—for the business rather than short-term, but eventually short-lived, gains.
A bit of luck was not foreign to their success. In the first third of the 20th century, major oil fields were found in Texas, first near Beaumont, then in West Texas, and, in the 1930s, in East Texas, notably the East Texas Oil Field. Those discoveries would participate in tremendous growth for Texas and… for Neiman-Marcus. Some formerly modest Texans found themselves with sudden fortunes and wanted to know how to spend it best. Neiman-Marcus had a reputation for quality and sophistication. Let’s not attribute the store’s success to luck only, though. By making the decision not to compromise on excellence during the Depression, the store was offering clothing of unique quality when it was needed.
As a business becomes successful, there is often a desire and an encouragement to grow. Over the years, the Marcuses did grow the store by adding floors to their existing building and by expanding the merchandise they were offering. But Herbert and Carrie long remained reluctant to open additional stores. The reason was simple: With one store, in which they could be present 100% of the time it was open, they could make sure customers would be treated in the way that made Neiman-Marcus successful—but they couldn’t be in two (or more!) places at once, and hence feared that opening additional stores would negatively impact excellence and customer service.
In 1951, Neiman-Marcus opened a second floor in the suburb of Dallas—not too far from the flagship store downtown—and was able to maintain quality. However, it would not be until 1971, after the merger with Broadway-Hale, that the company would open its first store out of state.
To quote Jeff Bezos, “Your brand is what people say about you when you're not in the room.” The perception of the Neiman-Marcus brand reveals how successful the store was very early on in its pursuit of excellence. Stories abound about the elegance and taste associated with the Neiman-Marcus label or the references to “Neiman-Marcus women” as stylish, elegant women. Frank Tolbert explained:
“Neiman-Marcus is an adjective—and a superlative one. An unusually well-groomed woman, who rhymes tastefully with her clothes, is likely to be described as ‘very Neiman-Marcus-ish!’” (Neiman-Marcus, Texas, p. 2)
Not only did Neiman-Marcus bring high standards, but it also insisted on higher standards than the competition, which resulted in the competition having to follow if they wanted to stay in business (Neiman-Marcus, Texas, p. 82), which benefited non-Neiman-Marcus consumers as well. This is, of course, one of the benefits of competition.
Customer Satisfaction
Of the two cardinal values that made Neiman-Marcus one of the biggest Texas success stories, customer satisfaction undeniably complements excellence.
The Store’s Mission and its Second Advertisement: Serving a Community
Neiman-Marcus’ mission was not to serve just affluent customers but rather a community of women.
Throughout the existence of the store, the family members insisted on that mission, a somewhat tricky one as they had to carefully strike the right balance in offering both luxury products for wealthy customers and high-quality products that less wealthy customers could afford—and encourage both groups of customers to patronize the same store at the same time.
The first advertisement for the store, right before its opening, explained that “the selection will meet every taste, every occasion and every price [emphasis added].” However, Jerrie Marcus Smith recounts that many customers were persuaded that the merchandise would be too expensive for them. A few days after the opening, Al published a second advertisement:
“Within days, Al was forced to put out another advertisement, which amounted to a correction, stating clearly that, although the Store did offer the highest quality merchandise, it was, nevertheless, affordable. He explained that the women's garments being offered were available at several price points.” (A Girl Named Carrie, p. 69)
In Minding the Store, Stanley confirmed that they were able to do both, and that “there is a thin market for $50,000 furs, and if we depended on the sale of them for any substantial portion of our volume, we would have a very small business” (pp. 165, 167-168).
Neiman-Marcus wanted to create customer satisfaction first and foremost, which was the purpose of a good sale to the Marcuses.
Attending to Customers and Driving Profits: Flawless Customer Service
Herbert, Carrie, and Stanley were always available for customers—consistently. And if they were busy minding the store in some other capacity that didn’t involve helping a customer, they would immediately drop that activity to put the customer first. Herbert and Carrie were always in the store advising customers. Tolbert recounts:
“[O]ne morning several years ago the board of directors was considering building the branch store in Preston Hollow. The phone rang. One of Mrs. Carrie Neiman's customers of 40-year standing was looking for her on the second floor.
Aunt Carrie didn't have to make any excuses. The other directors understood. She ran for her customer. The meeting ended. The $1,600,000 expansion in the suburbs was forgotten for that day.” (Neiman-Marcus, Texas, pp. 6-7)
Stanley Marcus learned from and followed in the footsteps of his father and aunt. He tells how Carrie taught him the importance of attending to customers’ special requests: “If we don’t care of these unusual requests from women who are depending on us, they might drop in to a competitive store in New York, and then we would lose them for good.” (Minding the Store, p. 63)
Stanley also went to extra lengths to fix the occasional error or issue that Neiman-Marcus customers faced with the store’s products—or to deliver on special requests that had nothing to do with the store.
The Marcuses were committed to service, which, in the retail industry, makes a world of difference. Stanley wrote abundantly on salesmanship in his Viewpoints—what to do and how later customers (in general) faced the loss of the tradition of service.
Employees were also asked to keep information about what their customers bought and little details such as birthdays or anniversaries, which could then be used by the salespersons to call the customer and give them an occasion to bring them to the store. This sales practice helped build relationships between the store and its customers—a win-win. Who doesn’t appreciate being wished Happy Birthday, or that the person you trust as your personal stylist remembers your tastes and what products you bought in which color? It shows interest, attention, and active listening. It benefits both parties.
Before he died, Stanley left notes related to the publication of the cookbook Neiman Marcus Cooks, in which he reiterated the importance of serving customers promptly, and that they liked “to be known by name and have their habits and taste preferences recognized.”
The Marcuses put customers first. Neiman-Marcus’ goal wasn’t to sell just about anything for sale in the store to any customer that entered the store. The Marcuses understood it would not have worked out—for the customers or the store. The Marcuses were aiming for win-win transactions. They would advise a customer to buy a cheaper product if they thought it suited the customer better according to his or her taste or situation. In return, customers trusted the store had their interests in mind, too. And they came back.
Tolbert quotes a customer explaining:
“I was given the warmest, most efficient, intelligent attention. Wherever I turned I found charming, thoughtful salesmen and women. They weren’t selling but suggesting. And each one had an ideal, perfect suggestion.” (Neiman-Marcus, Texas, p. 9)
The documentary The Store shows a Neiman-Marcus manager stating that the purpose of Neiman-Marcus remained “to make sales” and that it is “the only purpose in the building.” Stanley reports in Minding the Store that the founders had explained to their employees that they wanted “to sell satisfaction, not just merchandise.” The two statements are not contradictory. Neiman-Marcus’ mission is to sell its customers merchandise that will satisfy them—and to make a profit in the process. And it worked, as customers asked for the Marcuses for all sorts of advice—and came back to buy more merchandise.
Ambition
Any new, especially innovative, enterprise can hit walls and face bad luck—it’s a part of life, but for a business, it also tests how badly you want your idea to succeed. Neiman-Marcus faced several setbacks, but the determination of the family to make the business successful is one reason why it is still in existence more than a hundred years later. Herbert, Carrie, and Al were confident that their project would succeed—but they also worked hard to make it happen.
Against Naysayers, Fires, and Economic Turmoil: Confidence, Determination, and Resilience
The three founders started by facing the unavoidable people who try to discourage you from pursuing your dream: their competitors before they first opened and some family members after the first fire—although the latter quickly rallied behind them after it was obvious the trio would not give up. Because at the time Neiman-Marcus opened, Dallas still had almost the feel of a frontier town, Tolbert recounts that “to merchants of the Dallas of yesterday, the idea of Neiman-Marcus seemed pretentious” (Neiman-Marcus, Texas, p. 11). It’s hard to know if Neiman-Marcus’ competitors were intuitively perceiving the extraordinary competition that it would become or if, blind to change and complacent about their success, they did not take the three young, ambitious founders seriously.
Neiman-Marcus also faced two devastating fires that they decided to turn into opportunities.
Just five years after the store opened, a fire destroyed the entire building located at Elm and Murphy and the stock of merchandise. Herbert Marcus decided this would be the occasion to find a bigger building to give the store more space and expand the number of departments. In 15 days, Neiman-Marcus was back in business at Main and Ervay.
Many years later, in 1964, Stanley was woken up in the middle of the night when another fire destroyed a large part of the Neiman-Marcus building and its merchandise just before Christmas—a period of essential sales for the store. In just a few hours, Stanley assembled his team and resources to find a temporary place to continue doing business and provide the store’s customers with the Christmas gifts they would inevitably shop for. All customers who had pending orders were contacted. Brides whose wedding dresses were destroyed by the fire were quickly offered the opportunity to come pick a new one. No fatalism. No victim mentality. Stanley just did what needed to be done to keep Neiman-Marcus in business. Just grit and determination.
A temporary location opened three days later. And just a year and a half after the fire, the Neiman-Marcus building had been repaired and could reopen—bigger and offering new merchandise.
Neiman-Marcus also experienced economic turmoil, including the Panic of 1907, the Wall Street Crash of 1929, the Great Depression, and two world wars.
Innovation
From Custom-Made to Ready-to-Wear Clothing
When Neiman-Marcus opened to be the best ready-to-wear women's outfit store, the custom was for people to have their clothes made especially for them. In Minding the Store, Stanley explained:
“Prior to the turn of the century, fine clothes for women were all made to order. If a woman had enough money, she went to Europe to have her clothes made; if she didn't have that much, she had them made in New York; if she didn't have that much, she went to the local dressmaker.” (p. 11)
The store’s concept went against the tradition of how clothes were made at the time. They were very aware of that, but they wanted to bring something new and original to the market—and to improve it in the process. Neiman-Marcus decided it would bring Europe to Dallas women. The store’s first ad explained:
“We will improve ready-to-wear merchandising. … We began our intended innovation at the very foundation; that is to say, with the builders of Women's Garments. We have secured exclusive lines which have never been shown in Texas before, garments that stand in a class alone as to character and fit.”
Neiman-Marcus did not carry fabrics used to create women’s clothes on demand; they offered the best and finest ready-to-wear the country—and, of course, Dallas—could find and simply provided adjustments for customers.
Promotion and Marketing
Another significant innovation that Stanley Marcus brought to the store was exceptional promotion and marketing.
On top of advertisements that would tactfully and intelligently promote garments for both the richest and more modest clients side by side—Neiman-Marcus was the “first retail store in Texas to mount a major national advertising campaign” (Neiman Marcus by Coerver)—Stanley launched a series of promotional events that would give Neiman-Marcus extensive coverage in the media and international renown. That was another way to compete with New York in the fashion arena. He and Carrie came up with the idea of having weekly fashion shows during the Great Depression, in part to keep people simply coming to the store to see beautiful fashion. It was also a way to put Dallas on the map of fashion in the United States, and compete with New York department stores. Stanley built on that idea to reach new levels of promotion for department stores.
In 1938, he added the Neiman-Marcus Award for Distinguished Service in the Field of Fashion to the fashion shows, recognizing American and European designers. This definitely helped put Dallas on the map of fashion and, again, promote the store, which would give the award to, and hence receive, the likes of Grace Kelly, Coco Chanel, or Christian Dior. A few years later, the store would also award a similar prize to a customer.
In 1957, he launched the Fortnights, which featured a country and its products for two weeks in the store. These involved tremendous preparations with the target country, building relationships with the state and local producers to convince them that it would benefit both the country—and its businesses—and Neiman-Marcus—and Dallas. This, again, gave international coverage to Neiman-Marcus. The idea started as a way to counter sales slowdown in the fall, right before the holidays. Fortnights were originally made to fill that gap but generated much more benefits for Neiman-Marcus, not the least being worldwide attention. The very first country featured was France.
Stanley also expanded the store’s Christmas catalog to offer “exotic” or incredible gifts, and later “his and her” gifts that would grab people’s and the media’s attention so much that it would, again, create enormous publicity. Some of the items were “his and her airplanes” or “his and her miniature submarines.”
Neiman-Marcus also came up with the idea of offering personalized gift wrapping. It became so popular that some people who didn’t live in Dallas would order at Neiman-Marcus a product they could find where they lived just to have it gift-wrapped at Neiman-Marcus and sent to them wrapped.
Family and Community
Neiman-Marcus was a family business, but sometimes family businesses do not always find unity in the ties that link the founders and employees—or the family members between each other. Al Neiman, Carrie’s husband, sold his stake to Herbert, in part following disagreements between him and both Herbert and Stanley.
However, all the literature on the store mentions the strong ties that linked the Marcuses. All of Herbert’s sons ended up working in the store. Even Herbert and Carrie’s parents got a role in the business. Herbert and Carrie’s father sat at the door and greeted clients. Carrie, especially after her divorce from Al Neiman, constantly pampered all family members.
Both Herbert and Stanley were very active in the Dallas community.
According to the Jewish Museum of the American West, Herbert “served as a Director of the Dallas Museum of Art … as President and Director of the Republican National Bank & Trust Company, and the Dallas Joint Land Bank … was a Founder, Director, and Treasurer of the Southwestern Medical Foundation, the primary fundraiser for the establishment of the Southern Methodist University … a member of the Executive Committee of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce, and an active member on the Welfare Board of the City of Dallas.” He also “became President of Temple Emanu-El of Dallas, and a chief founder of the Southwestern division of the National Conference of Christians and Jews.”
According to Southern Methodist University, Stanley “served as director and president of the Dallas Citizens Council, co-chairman for the Dallas Interracial Council for Business Opportunity, and a member of the Commission of Race and Housing. In addition, Mr. Marcus was president of the Dallas Symphony Society and the Dallas Art Association and served as a member of the Dallas Chamber of Commerce and the Dallas Council on World Affairs.”
Conclusion
In their first advertisement, right before the store opened, Herbert, Carrie, and Al listed what they aimed to accomplish with Neiman-Marcus: excellence and quality, customer satisfaction, innovation, and service to an entire community. The store delivered very early and continued achieving these values and bringing them to its customers relentlessly throughout the decades. The store has been in business for nearly 117 years.
Neiman Marcus will remain associated with Texas not just because it was created in Texas—and only had one then two Texas store(s) for the longest time—but also because it helped put Dallas and Texas on the map, it is linked to the state's oil history, it revolutionized fashion, it became a business model for the best customer service (I wonder how much of today's client-centric businesses, such as Amazon, have learned from Neiman Marcus), and it faced hardships with grit and resilience. It likely made Texas proud—as much as it made women proud to wear Neiman Marcus.
As we read more stories of achievement in Texas, we will be able to narrow down the values and virtues that are regularly seen as essential to achievement. I’ll take a first guess that at least excellence, ambition, hard work, and grit will come out as essential in many of these stories.
Sources
Neiman-Marcus, Texas: The Story of the Proud Dallas Store by Frank X. Tolbert, Henry Holt and Company, 1953.
Minding the Store by Stanley Marcus, University of North Texas Press, 1997/1974.
A Girl Named Carrie: The Visionary Who Created Neiman Marcus and Set the Standard for Fashion by Jerrie Marcus Smith, University of North Texas Press, 2021.
The Store by Director Frederick Wiseman (1983).
A Taste of Texas, Jane Trahey (Ed.), Random House, 1949.
Neiman Marcus Cooks: Recipes for Beloved Classics and Updated Favorites by Kevin Garvin, John Harrisson, and Jody Horton, Rizzoli, 2014.
Neiman-Marcus store advertisement, Dallas Morning News (September 8, 1907).
The Viewpoints of Stanley Marcus: A Ten-Year Perspective by Stanley Marcus, University of North Texas Press, 1995.
Stanley Marcus From A-Z: Viewpoints, Volume II by Stanley Marcus, University of North Texas Press, 2000.
Merchant Princes: An Intimate History of Jewish Families Who Built Great Department Stores by Leon A. Harris, Berkley Publishing Corporation, 1980.
Neiman Marcus: Last of the Merchant Kings, Biography, 1997.
Original Site of Neiman-Marcus, the Historical Marker Database, 2023/2020.
Dallas, TX, Texas State Historical Association, 2023/1952.
Dallas, Texas Population 2024, World Population Review, n.d.
Wildcatters: The True Texas Oil History by Peter Simek, Texas Farm Bureau Insurance, March 9, 2020.
Neiman Marcus by Don M. Coerver, Texas State Historical Association, 2020/1976.
The Jewish Fashion Pioneers of Neiman-Marcus, Dallas, Texas, Jewish Museum of the American West, 2014.
Neiman Marcus has been the heart of downtown Dallas for 113 years by Maria Halkias, Dallas Morning News, May 7, 2020
Stanley Marcus, J. Erik Jonsson Ethics Award, Office of the Provost, Southern Methodist University, n.d.
Made In Texas: Why Was The Neiman Marcus Fortnight Event So Cool? by Lance Avery Morgan, Curated Texan, March 24, 2023.
The planning fallacy is real, y’all 🤦♀️ I am late posting the first story and also not posting on the planned schedule 😬 The story of Neiman Marcus was extensive and fascinating, and it took me much more time to research than I expected.
I do plan to return to the posting planning first announced—and hopefully stick with it!