Neiman’s 1987 Catalogue Lets You Send in the Clowns

Every year, fans of Neiman-Marcus eagerly await the specialty store’s sumptuous holiday catalogue to see what outlandish “his and her� offering lurks within.

This ultimate merchandising gimmick made its debut in 1960, with his and her Beechcraft airplanes--in choice of color, style and cabin arrangement. For 1987, the Dallas-based store is giving couples a $7,500 chance to run away and join the circus--for a day of clowning or tightrope walking.

In the interim, Neiman’s has sold ermine bathrobes, Chinese junks, ostriches, submarines and mummy cases. Believe it or not, of all these goofy items, only two failed to pass muster with customers.

In 1984, Neiman-Marcus gave customers a bum steer with its offer of a wooden desk in the shape of a Longhorn, fashioned of eight exotic woods applied in 23,000 one-inch tiles over a framework. The horns, with a 42-inch span, were real, but no one lassoed that $65,000 hunk. The next year it sold at a Longhorn auction for $23,000 and now resides at South Fork, the ranch immortalized in television’s “Dallas,� according to William H. Williams, senior vice president of mail order.

“We lost a little money on that one,� he acknowledged.

In 1978, Neiman’s showcased a $90,000, 50-year lease on two “natural� safety deposit boxes, deep within a 9,000-foot mountain of granite in Utah’s Wasatch Range, for a couple seeking maximum security for valuables. The vaults came complete with alarms and surveillance systems powered by waterfall-generated electricity. No bids trickled in.

“There are no rich pessimists, I guess,� Williams quipped.

The store still gets orders for Shar-Pei puppies, the wrinkly Chinese dogs that were featured at $2,000 each in 1983. Neiman’s refers callers to the breeder. And the store has sold more than 100 of last year’s cuddly catch--from a new breed called the California spangled cat with lush spots like a jungle cat’s, at $1,400 per feline.

For many Neiman’s customers, price is clearly no object. By mid-November, the store had sold two pairs of $10,000 alligator jeans featured in the current catalogue. (The company won’t discuss how the catalogue did after the Oct. 19 stock market crash, but gloating rivals say Neiman’s was hit hard.)

The Neiman-Marcus mail-order business will generate more than $60 million in sales this year, according to Williams. Some revenue comes from advertising in the catalogues paid for by outside companies. This year’s catalogue, for example, features an ad for a Maserati convertible, which Neiman’s incorporated into a sweepstakes program.

Pioneers in the using ads in catalogues were the Sharper Image, a retailer and cataloguer that sells gadgets and toys to yuppies, and Bloomingdale’s by Mail. Spiegel, Marshall Field, Orvis and others have also adopted the idea.

According to industry data, revenue from such advertising is expected to reach $25 million in 1988, up from $10 million in 40 publications this year and only $2.5 million in 10 catalogues in 1986.

Even Neiman-Marcus doesn’t feel immune to market forces in mail order. “It’s much more competitive,� Williams said. “The market is not expanding as fast as in the early to mid-’80s.� But so far contenders seem content to leave the his and her arena to the master.