MARCUS, STANLEY

MARCUS, STANLEY (1905–2002), U.S. retailer. Marcus was two years old when his family founded Neiman Marcus, but it was his merchandising talent that made the store an internationally known symbol of quality, service, luxury, and exclusivity. Born in Dallas, Texas, he was the eldest of four sons. A high school graduate at 16, Marcus entered Amherst College in Massachusetts. When a fraternity refused to admit him after learning he was a Jew, he transferred to Harvard College and joined a Jewish fraternity. He earned a B.A. from Harvard in 1925 and attended Harvard Business School for a year. He wanted to go into the book business, but his family persuaded him to join the family store, which had been founded in 1907 by Marcus's father, Herbert; his uncle, Abraham Lincoln Neiman; and his aunt, Carrie Marcus Neiman. Marcus did so in 1926 as secretary-treasurer and a director. In 1927 he created the first weekly fashion shows to be staged in an American department store. When business slumped during the Great Depression, he reached out to the middle-income market as well as Neiman Marcus's more affluent customers, declaring, "We want to sell the millionaire, his young daughter – and his secretary." He was appointed executive vice president in 1935 and was among the first retailers outside New York to advertise regularly in national fashion magazines. In 1938, he launched the Neiman Marcus Awards that are given annually to fashion luminaries. The following year, Neiman Marcus mailed its first holiday catalog, a promotion that became a well-publicized annual event, attracting international attention with such sumptuous offerings as Chinese junks, "his and her" airplanes, and a Black Angus steer, either "on the hoof" or as steaks. Marcus also initiated a series of annual "fortnights," two-week extravaganzas that featured the products of a specific country or region, a promotion widely copied by other retailers. In 1950, when his father, Herbert, died, Marcus succeeded him as president. In 1969, he helped engineer the sale of the company to Broadway-Hale Stores, a merchandising conglomerate, and a major expansion program was soon under way. In 1973, he became chairman and chief executive officer and was succeeded as president by his son, Richard. Marcus became chairman emeritus in 1975 and established his own consulting company. He was inducted into the Advertising Hall of Fame in 2000, only the second retailer to be so honored. Marcus wrote two popular books about his experiences at Neiman Marcus, Minding the Store (1974) and Quest for the Best (1978). Feisty and forthright, he was an outspoken liberal in generally conservative Dallas. In 1963, following the assassination there of U.S. President John F. Kennedy, he took out full-page newspaper ads called "What's Right With Dallas" that asked residents to respect "differing points of view" and to reject "the spirit of absolutism for which our community has suffered." From the mid-1980s until 1999, he wrote a weekly column in the Dallas Morning News, sounding off on everything from fashion to civil rights to the image of his native city. His family's business, which had eventually become part of Harcourt General, was spun off in 1999 as the Neiman Marcus Group, a discrete entity that included Berg-dorf Goodman and NM Direct. By 2005, the original Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas had evolved into 35 units throughout the U.S. with annual sales that had grown from $20.6 million when Marcus became president to more than $3.5 billion. -BIBLIOGRAPHY: Dallas Morning News (Jan. 23, 2002); New York Times (Jan. 23, 2002); Women's Wear Daily (Oct. 15, 2002). (Mort Sheinman (2nd ed.)