The Man Who Sells Everything STANLEY MARCUS
FOR the man with only $250,000 to spend on Christmas presents this year, there is a store dedicated to providing a wide selection of worldly goods tailored to his budget: Neiman-Marcus of Texas. There he may very well be waited on by the saturnine president of the company, Stanley Marcus, 55, who scours the world looking for unique, elegant and off-beat items--and likes to sell them himself. This Christmas, for the well-heeled customer, he has a matched pair of Beechcraft airplanes neatly emblazoned "His" and "Hers" for $176,000, an espresso coffee-making machine at $250, or a roast beef serving cart for $2,230 (which, Marcus points out, "includes 300 lbs. of steaks or 600 lbs. of beef on the hoof").
In the oil-welling land of the big spenders, Marcus has sought not only to create a store devoted to luxury but to provide standards that his often newly rich customers can rely on. Operating a store that is in many ways comparable to the best in Manhattan, he has effectively imposed Eastern and Continental taste on his customers. Though ready to indulge rich whims, he has been known to kill a good sale if he thinks a purchase is not suitable, e.g., a mink coat for a college freshman. As a result, Neiman-Marcus is a respected name in stylish circles around the world. In the past decade Neiman-Marcus' sales have nearly doubled, will hit $41 million this year. The original store in downtown Dallas has branched into a suburban Dallas store and one in Houston. Last week Stanley Marcus announced plans for a new $2,000,000 store to be completed in 1962 in suburban Fort Worth.
THE idea of a luxury store in a cattle-and-cotton city of 86,000 seemed slightly pretentious when Neiman-Marcus was founded in 1907 by Stanley's father, Herbert Marcus, and his aunt and uncle, Mr. and Mrs. A. L. Neiman. It was doing all right in 1926, with sales of $2,600,000, when Harvard-educated Stanley, then 21, went to work in the store's fur shop. Then the luxury goods really began to move. The year before the shop had sold only $74,000 worth of pelts. Using the casual, low-pressure manner that he still assumes behind a counter, he sold $74,000 in furs in his first four months on the job. By the end of his first year, fur sales were $420,000.
His selling touch was matched by his talent for promotion and advertising. He instituted the annual Neiman-Marcus fashion design awards, which draw top designers from New York and Paris to the heart of Texas to show their originals. In his self-appointed role as the omninventoried merchant prince, Marcus window-shops Europe with his camera in search of ideas, on one trip spotted a French silk housecoat that he copied this year in chinchilla. Price: $7,950. "We haven't sold any yet," he admits, "but we've had a couple of inquiries. I like it, and I like to keep my own appetite as a consumer whetted."
HE pays his help well; a few Neiman clerks, working on commission as well as salary, can earn up to $25,000 a year. In return Marcus demands that they be unfailingly polite no matter how uncouth the customer may seem. He likes to remind them of the cotton-smocked girl who once came in straight off her father's farm. Papa had just struck oil, and Daughter spent $10,000 to outfit herself in style, including shoes for her bare feet.
Marcus married a Neiman salesgirl, Sportswear Buyer Mary Cantrell, in 1932. Today they live at No. 1 Nonesuch Road in a modern house jammed with paintings, books and sculpture. A civic booster, he promotes Dallas with almost as much zeal as he does his store, works on everything from the Chamber of Commerce to the Symphony Society. But he likes nothing better than discovering things to sell. Once when a woman asked for a dress in a certain shade of buff yellow she had seen in a painting, Marcus had a fabric dyed to order in New York, made up a dress specially for her for only $42. The next season Neiman's "buff yellow" was a bestseller and a fashion hit.
Though it draws the biggest promotional splash, the carriage trade is only a small fraction of Neiman-Marcus' business. "We are geared to sell the oilman," says Marcus, "but even more, the oilman's secretary." Still, it is the very special sale that pleases him most. In one working day last week, Marcus came up with the gift for the "man who has everything, including a hangover," and sold a portable oxygen tank. Another customer who wanted "something new" got a watch specially made without numbers (it had only a single black dot). And then, of course, "the wife of the Vice President-elect came by and selected her inaugural gown along with a new suit."
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