Neiman Marcus has thrived on customer demand for runway show merchandise from New York to Milan Fashion Weeks in the past, although the luxury department store is seeing a decrease in their pricey fashion forward item sales and are blaming fashion bloggers for not doing their due diligence in promoting their new products.
The fashion retail company has reported a 4.1 percent sales drop in their exclusive and newly opened stores around the U.S. Karen Katz, Neiman Marcus Group CEO, while conducting a conference call with the stores investors commented that their merchandise sales are low due to the hot and cold reviews fashion bloggers are posting all over social media. Katz also commented that by the time the new products ship out months later after the first initial hype bloggers raved about previously, they have pushed their followers to move on to another brand or product.
Other luxury department stores like Nordstrom, Bloomingdales, Saks Fifth Avenue, and Macy’s have all seen a major drop in sales this year. Each of these companies are seeing sales growth in their discount outlet store venues instead.
To gain more sales, Neiman Marcus is working to shorten the supply chain demand by adapting quicker e-commerce market for their products, which has generated more that 25 percent of their overall sales.
Even though Neiman Marcus has reported an overall 407.2-million-dollar loss from their low sales numbers, the company continues to blame their fashion bloggers mainly in the state of Texas for their losses. Karen Katz stated in her phone conference that the company is losing more sales in Texas stores and that their Southern clients are reluctant to buy their usual luxury items due to the flexing prices in the oil industry. (Stereotypical assumption that Texans get most of their wealth from oil)
The CEO is also blaming their low sales numbers on tourists who are unwilling to purchases luxury items due to the strong U.S. dollar and currency dollar rates. Katz stated that the strong dollar is keeping tourists away and negatively impacting the spending of the incoming travelers.
It is unclear what Karen Katz and the many employees at Neiman Marcus plan to do to recover from their worst sales record since the beginning of the Great Recession.
