Stanley Marcus, in full Harold Stanley Marcus, (born on April 20, 1905 in Dallas, Texas, U.S.–died on January 22, 2002 in Dallas), American retail-store executive whose advertising campaigns earned Neiman Marcus stores a reputation for luxury and style. Neiman Marcus stores the reputation of being luxurious and style.
His father, Herbert Marcus, and his uncle, Al Neiman, opened the first Neiman Marcus store in Dallas, Texas, in 1907. Their goal was to provide expensive ready-to-wear clothes. In the past women with the money to buy costly clothes typically ordered them from dressmakers. Neiman and Marcus hired a dressmaker from an competitor store to make alterations only, and eliminated the piece-goods and fabrics department.
Stanley Marcus earned a master’s degree in business at Harvard in 1926. He began his work in The store in the role of floorman the following year. He began work on establishing the brand’s image and insisted that no other brand they sold would be sold at another Dallas store. He created Neiman Marcus the first department store to stage fashion shows for customers. In 1929, he was the merchandising manager for all the apparel divisions.
In 1934, on Marcus’s advice, Neiman Marcus is the first store of its kind to advertise in national magazines such like Vogue as well as Harper’s Bazaar. The executive vice president was in charge from 1935 until 1950 Marcus created his Neiman Marcus Award dubbed”the “Oscar of fashion,” in 1938. Marcus also curated a number of exclusive displays of international merchandise that he coordinated to Dallas culture events. One of Marcus’s strategies to draw attention was to provide bizarre items specifically designed for rich eccentrics for example, his “His and Her” series of gifts, which consisted of “His and Her” windmills and camels, planes, and arks featuring live animals. These items made catalogs for the store, and especially that of the edition for Christmas edition, very well-known and widely known.
Marcus served as cochairman of Marcus was cochairman of the Dallas Interracial Council for Business Opportunities and, in the year 1968 Marcus told customers that the retailer would favor affirmative-action companies. Following selling Neiman Marcus to Broadway-Hale Stores, Inc. (from 1975, Carter Hawley Hale Stores, Inc.), in 1969, Marcus became a director of the company. Marcus resigned from the business in 1975, and became chairman of the company emeritus. In 1999, the Neiman Marcus Group that was comprised of Neiman Marcus as well as its retailer Bergdorf Goodman, became a publicly traded company.
A lover of rare and rare titles, Marcus actively supported the arts in Dallas. Marcus also composed The Mind of the Store (1974) as well as “Quest for the Best (1979).
