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Despite the heat of Texas, Stanley Marcus has personally sold $5,000,000 worth of mink coats, and he claims that the store sells more than any other store on earth. But he once refused to sell an oilman a mink coat for his 16-year-old daughter starting school in the East because it would not be appropriate, instead persuaded him to buy a $295 muskrat. He also sees to it that Neiman's stocks many items his customers might need in an emergency, e.g., a set of Steuben crystal plates with Mexico's crest "because sooner or later somebody will be going to call on the President of Mexico and need a proper gift." For particular customers, Marcus will go to any lengths. He has provided bail for customers pinched on a toot, on a few hours' notice once rounded up a steer's skull for a banker who wanted to take one back East for an artist friend. One oilman, who had bought thousands of dollars worth of gifts for his family, due back from a Florida trip on Christmas Eve, wasn't satisfied just to have the presents sent out in boxes. He arranged to have all the gifts put in a duplicate of a Neiman's show window, including spotlights and mannequins, in his house, so they would be the first things his family saw as they came in the door.
Diamond Drills. Stanley Marcus got his sales training from two masters of the art—his father, Herbert Marcus (who died in 1950), cofounder of the store, and his aunt, Mrs. Carrie Neiman (who died last March), the divorced wife of the other cofounder, A. L. Neiman. From the store's beginnings in 1907, long before Dallas smelled any oil, Herbert Marcus insisted on buying only the best. On Neiman's departure in 1928, after the divorce, Aunt Carrie became the dominant force of the store, proved time & again her uncanny ability to guess women's buying tastes. By 1930, when the East Texas oil strike put Dallas astride the world's biggest oilfield, Neiman-Marcus' long investment in luxuries paid off by providing the natural outlet for oil barons hunting channels of conspicuous consumption. They found such gewgaws as $20 gold toothpicks, $265 champagne swizzle sticks, cuff links made of gold oil derricks and diamond drill bits.
Although Neiman's still caters to the new rich, it does not forget that the bulk of its business comes from those who spend only $250 a year. With the $2,000 dresses, it also carries dresses for as little as $9.95. For all customers, Stanley Marcus started weekly fashion lectures, and the women who jammed in have accepted his quietly authoritative dicta. "Dallas women don't want to be that overworked creature, the glamour girl. They just want to be themselves—feminine, nice-looking and, above all, individual." This means an air of restrained elegance known as "the Neiman-Marcus look." It is largely because many of the Texas new rich "were willing to be guided because they recognized an authority," says Stanley Marcus seriously, "that they were able to avoid many of the pitfalls of the rich. In a relatively brief period, it was hard to tell them from any 'old money' group in America."
Mr. Stanley also insists on improving