What’s next for Neiman Marcus under Saks Global

Neiman Marcus, which came to Dallas in 1907, has long been a staple of both the luxury department space and Southern retail. Neiman Marcus became popular by selling ready-to-wear fashions to oil-rich Texans, and “it was very pioneering in terms of bringing fashion outside New York and Paris,” said Steve Dennis, who served as svp of strategy and multichannel marketing at Neiman Marcus from 2004-2008. Neiman Marcus eventually spread across the U.S., opening stores in more than a dozen states and wooing shoppers with its fashion shows, personal shopping service and restaurants.

That growth didn’t last forever. Like other department stores, Neiman Marcus had trouble holding onto sales as customers’ tastes and spending habits shifted. By May 2020, Neiman Marcus was the first major department store chain to file for bankruptcy during the pandemic. At the time, it had more than $5 billion in debt. Neiman Marcus exited Chapter 11 in September 2020. Four years later, in December 2024, it was scooped up by Saks Fifth Avenue’s parent company for roughly $2.7 billion. Neiman Marcus’s CEO at the time, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, left Neiman Marcus as part of the deal.

Now, under Saks Global, Neiman Marcus is trying to grow once again. But it’s doing so at a challenging time for the luxury industry, which saw spending in 2024 drop to its worst year since the Great Recession, according to Bain. Luxury shoppers today have numerous options and channels for making purchases, and many high-end department stores have struggled to bring in a younger clientele. They’ve also faced increased competition from vendors, many of whom are opening their own stores in the same markets.

Further complicating matters, Saks Global is attempting a turnaround for Neiman Marcus as it deals with its own issues. It has a now-18-month backlog of unpaid bills to vendors that puts its financial viability into question.

Still, Saks Global says it has big plans for the brands under its umbrella, including making “further advancements in online functionality and fulfillment processes.”

Dennis told Modern Retail that he is not bullish on the future of department stores. However, when it comes to Neiman Marcus, he believes Saks Global CEO Marc Metrick and his team will “do the work” to understand the value that Neiman Marcus holds, particularly in the South, where Neiman Marcus evokes a sense of local pride. Everyone in Dallas has a story about Neiman Marcus, Dennis said. “There’s a kind of fondness there.”

Indeed, the news that Saks was closing the Neiman Marcus store in downtown Dallas sent shockwaves across the area. In an editorial, The Dallas Morning News wrote that “Neiman’s is tied to so many memories of the city.” “This is a painful reckoning that a part of who we are is going away,” it continued. Saks says its decision to close the store involved a dispute with the landlord over a piece of land under the store — not the acquisition that closed in December.

Lynn Van Amburgh, an svp in the Dallas-Fort Worth office of real estate company Weitzman, grew up in Dallas and has fond memories of the downtown Neiman Marcus store. She told Modern Retail that the store closure is “a loss downtown, but at the same time, it’s not totally surprising.” Retail there has evolved as the population has grown, Van Amburgh said, citing an influx of homes and office buildings.

Still, Van Amburgh is optimistic about Saks’s plans for Neiman Marcus at NorthPark Center. Neiman Marcus was one of the first tenants at NorthPark Center, which opened in 1965, and it “has been a landmark store in terms of productivity in the Dallas area,” Van Amburgh said. With this newly-revamped store, “I think [the brand] is only going to get better and stronger,” she told Modern Retail.

Saks Global is based in New York City, quite the jump from Dallas. As Saks Global works to solidify Neiman Marcus’s future, Dennis hopes that Saks will take a more zoomed-out view and bring on employees with knowledge of retail markets outside New York City and the larger Northeast.

Dennis added that, as Saks moves forward, it will have to figure out when to prioritize Neiman Marcus in cities with other Saks properties. Right now, Neiman Marcus has roughly 35 stores left, while Saks Fifth Avenue has around 50 stores. Keeping stores from both brands in the same mall wouldn’t make sense, Dennis believes, “unless you’re going to push one more toward accessible luxury and one toward pure luxury.”

Outside of Neiman Marcus’s downtown Dallas store, the Saks Fifth Avenue flagship in Toronto is rumored to be closing, as well. However, speaking to WWD, a Saks spokesperson said, “We have nothing to share. We don’t comment on rumors.”