Word: marcuse
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Last week a Texas delegation headed by Edward Marcus of Dallas' Neiman-Marcus department store returned from Lima, where the Texans investigated joint-venture possibilities with Peruvian businessmen. And a group of New Jersey civic leaders is just back from a visit to Brazil's underdeveloped north east state of Alagoas, looking for ways to help Brazilians help themselves. In one village the North Americans promised assistance for ten self-help projects, starting with a powerful pump for an irrigation well. Arthur Byrnes, assistant Alianza director for Brazil, explains: "This program is small in terms of dollars...
Decapitated Goddess. Such extravagant Neiman-Marcus items as a $150,000 necklace and a Doughty & Boehm quail-shaped teapot worth $50,000 escaped the fire undamaged, but about two-thirds of the store's $12 million stock of merchandise was either destroyed or made unsalable by N.M. standards. A $10,000 wooden figurine of Kuan Yin, a Chinese goddess of mercy, was decapitated and a $35,000 sable coat so saturated with smoke that Marcus deemed it uncleanable. "It would be like trying to take the smoke smell out of smoked herring," he said. Much of the less-damaged...
Later that same day, the store bought spot radio announcements advising customers that its suburban store and Fort Worth and Houston branches were open, and that phoned-in gift orders would be filled and wrapped in the usual distinctive N.M. manner. Sunday newspaper advertisements assured Texans that "Neiman-Marcus is ready to serve you tomorrow...
Fireside Chat. The fire started near the second-floor escalator around 3 a.m. on the Saturday that Marcus had expected to be "the biggest day of the Christmas shopping season," roared up the stairwell to gut the fourth and fifth floors. In some sections of the store untouched by flames, plastic hangers melted in the intense heat, dropping expensive clothing into dirty, swirling water. More than 150 firemen fought for five hours to control the fire, the costliest in Dallas history...
Almost immediately, Marcus had to face the considerable problems of rehabilitating a big store after disaster, one of which is the avoidance of what he calls "invisible damage": the possibility that customers will change their habits if their relationship with the store is broken off too long. To speed reopening and keep Neiman-Marcus customers from changing, he roused a Dallas contractor out of bed for a fireside chat, hired a New York interior decorator before the last fire truck had departed...