Customer Reviews

Minding the Store

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(1)
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I've read two books by S. Marcus - "Quest for the Best" and "Minding the Store". Both are fascinating.
Without any doubt, Stanley Marcus is the most talented American retailer of the 20th century. You will find out from this lively narrative what made him the best - impeccable taste, discriminate merchandising, extensive knowledge of manufacturing, business vision, professional honesty and breadth of intellectual interests. If you aspire to be a specialty retailer, drop 99% of the books about selling, they will not show you a worthy real-life example of how to run a store that customers can not resist to visit. Marcus does not hold back any secrets how he did it.
Read, laugh and get inspired.

A friendly and enjoyable tale of success in the retail business and how success was accomplished. Stanley Marcus recounts the growth of his family business and the stories of customer demands and customer service that created a hugely profitable and customer orientated retail empire.

While customer service is the primary focus of the book, creating innovative and exclusive items for the very wealthy provides a glimpse into how the rich find ways to dispose of their money. Marcus was a master of imaginative packages.

I bought 4 copies of the original edition and gave them away to people in sales. There is no better book for a young, or old, sales person to read.

This book, like "Quest for the Best" is an absolutely fascinating look into the world of high-end retailing. It should be in every business student's library.

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Stanley Marcus' first volume of memoirs was first published in 1974 while he was Chairman of the Board of Neiman-Marcus; this was six years after the chain, which had hitherto consisted of a family-run corporation dating back to 1907, was bought by Carter-Hawley-Hale Stores. Marcus interrelates the Marcus family saga with a history of their store in roughly chrolological order. To that he interposes his own upbringing, the parents who groomed him for excellence, the casual anti-Semitism that plagued him when he went East for college, and his steady and probably unstoppable rise from a prominent merchant to a spokesman for his native Dallas as well as for the store -- including his recognition as a liberal civil libertarian, a designation he didn't crave in the conservative Dallas of the 1960s but felt obliged to pursue.

Happily, what gives this memoir its real zing comes through some really enjoyable tales of life at the store and beyond. This book could almost have been called "The Joy of Retail." Marcus just seems to have been intuitively creative, as when he rose to the challenge of World War II stocking shortages with his "Hosiery of the Month Club," guaranteeing women two pairs of nylons a month as long as they maintained a Neiman-Marcus charge account. He communicates well the creative challenge of buying and merchandising for the luxury Dallas home store, the pressure of finding spur-of-the-moment confections to please any number of rich oilmen's wives, damn the expense. (In one instance he filled an oversized cognac bowl with angora sweaters and then put the "cherry" of a six-figure ruby on top.) His flair for promotion led to coups such as a then-shocking $1.5 million art loan from New York's Metropolitan Museum, and the recreation of chic Parisian boutiques on the ground floor of the store that kicked off a two-week celebration of French culture and merchandise. Among Neiman-Marcus' many firsts were the hiring of a full-time store publicist, and Marcus' inspiration to add outrageously over-the-top his-and-hers gift offerings (airplanes, camels; one year the offering was a quarter-million-dollar sack of uncut diamonds) to the store's glossy Christmas catalog -- and more to the point, creating an interest from the extra cachet that vastly expanded N-M's subscriber list. Of course, Marcus mixed with machers of all kinds, everyone from Abe Fortas and Lyndon Johnson to Perle Mesta and Coco Chanel. In the middle of the book are 28 pages of enjoyable and enlightening B&W photographs and drawings.

A perfect book? No. Marcus cannot stress too strongly his and the store's commitment to quality, though to this reviewer's way of thinking he does so too often. He had a logical and incisive mind -- not too far a stretch to call him a "Renaissance Man" -- but complex intellects with multiple interests are sometimes prone to over-compartmentalizing. Marcus tells numerous stories of refusing to compromise on the price of dry goods, not even a small cash discount, but at the same time he has a very good idea of how the fine jewelry must be priced to attract the oil millionaires and other wealthy the store catered to in the mid-20th Century. It's a little unclear why he engaged Frank Lloyd Wright to design a new home for him and his wife; what is certain that the two drove each other crazy, and Marcus eventually engaged a noteworthy local architect to design the house. When discussing his hobby of collecting antique statuary and European art for him and his wife, he flatly states that "Financial appreciation never concerned us," yet follows that loftiness IN THE VERY NEXT SENTENCE with "The excitement was, and still is, in pitting our judgment against the market..." Does a retail giant really need to be told that markets measure in money? Not for Stanley Marcus the foolish consistency of small minds.

What would Marcus think about today's Neiman Marcus (they dropped the hyphen a few years ago), eight years after his death? He might be pleased by the fact that the stores -- a chain of 40 now, represented in every U.S. region -- are controlled by two private-capital groups rather than a mass-merchandise retailer. He surely would smile at the cheek that prompted N-M chefs to concoct their own special chocolate chip-cookie recipe and to make a point of giving it away free, after the old Waldorf-Astoria red velvet cake urban myth of selling its recipe for hundreds of dollars transmogrified into Mrs. Fields cookies and then to the "Neiman-Marcus chocolate-chip cookie," although there was no such thing until the firm decided to capitalize on what might in lesser hands have become a public-relations nightmare. Surely, though, he would condemn the steadily eroding standards of formality in women's dress between the Fifties and today, when haute couture has largely been replaced by limited-edition designer sportsware. And the Christmas gift wrap he so lovingly commissioned and encouraged has given way to the uniformity of the gift box -- at an extra charge. Yet the outrageous his-and-hers Christmas catalog tradition continues: 2010's offering was a houseboat.

Despite the occasional backsliding into the stentorian voice, and the repetition of some opinions that are tantamount to rants in a few places, I enjoyed MINDING THE STORE enough to read it in two sittings. Before too long I also intend to read Marcus' 1979 follow-up, QUEST FOR THE BEST.
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A coworker attended a seminar at the Chicago Gift Show recently and this book was highly recommended. I'm managing to slog my way through it, but it isn't easy. The author truly speaks as if he's back in the 1940's and does a lot of name dropping of famous people . . . are we supposed to be impressed? There's also a fair amount of bragging about how smart the people were at Neiman Marcus, how they were so innovative and how their techniques for marketing were then copied "all over the world". While there is truth in these statements, I get a little weary of hearing it repeated so often. I'm sure there's some useful information here, so I'll keep reading, but it's taking a major effort to stay interested.

I guess it was my Business degree & marketing background I brought to the Architecture Masters program that made the Dean feel this might be my best contribution to the profession. Why else would he have presented me with this book upon defending my thesis project & graduating - was it really almost 30 years ago?

Now #2 of 4 kids is graduating college in advertising and I can't resist getting her this insightful, revealing history of a magic retail legacy that began in our home town. In fact, my mother grew up in the Adolphus - the marketing ally of Neimans - why else the memorable Thanksgiving parades? So this book certainly has roots to love for marketing majors, Dallasites, those in the fine arts, fashion. But it is more - much more.

The book teaches the rewards of quality, value and commitments to the good of the customer. It's not the mystique of the His & Hers fabulous Christmas catalogue gifts that make cash flow, its the quality of the $10 dresses. It's not the suit, it's the fitting; it's not the price, it's the value; it's not the steak, it's the sizzle. I hope the book passes on the value of ethics, its rewards, mystique and satisfaction, while proving the theory is all true and still alive & well today. Besides all that, it's a fun book to read.