The New Stars Of Retailing

Ask Ira Neimark and Marvin S. Traub to reminisce, and you'll get a feel for the heady days of retailing. Neimark, chief executive of Bergdorf Goodman, can still picture the Christmas of 1938, when, as a page at Bonwit Teller in New York, he saw customers such as the Vanderbilts shopping for stocking stuffers, footmen in tow. "I fell in love with the store and the attitude," says Neimark. And Traub recalls arriving fresh from Harvard business school at Bloomingdale's, a barn of a store he later turned into the country's capital of fashion glamour.

Now, the glamour has mostly been worn away by the harsh new realities of retailing. Bonwit's is gone from New York. Bergdorf's operating profits plummeted 82%, to $3.8 million, on sales of $199 million for the year ended in July. Bloomie's parent company, Federated Department Stores Inc., entered bankruptcy in January, 1990. Says Traub: "When I joined Bloomingdale's, I didn't have the goal of running a company in Chapter 11."