When did neiman Marcus launch its website?

Answer 1

Neiman Marcus first launched its website in fall, 1999. Initially, it was not an e-commerce (transactional) website; it was set up more as a fashion site to highlight select NM merchandise. It became transactional in spring, 2000 but produced very little revenue since NM lacked expertise in all aspects of online retail.

In fall, 2000, NM's CEO hired an executive to run NM Online. He, in turn, developed a lean team consisting of NM merchants, a marketing group staffed with new people with expertise in the developing world of on-line marketing, a creative group to develop the look of the site and the merchandise, and a web technology group (in concert with the corporate CIO) to completely rebuild and relaunch the website using a new tech platform from ATG. This new division, named NM Online ran the nm.com site, as well as websites for horchow.com, chefscatalog.com (eventually sold for a loss given its complete lack of strategic or operating fit with the rest of NMG's businesses) and finally bergdorfgoodman.com. While NMG never broke out the revenues and profits generated by NM Online in its very successful early years, industry leaders estimated that this new division generated incremental sales (not simply sales siphoned from the NM stores or the NM catalog divisions) north of $150MM and operating cash flow over $20M by the end of 2003, compared to 1999 figures of $2M and a loss of over $20M in 1999.

In addition, NM began to offer to "host" websites for a handful of vendors who lacked the expertise and resources to develop and operate their own websites; however, this "hosting" initiative never generated much in incremental sales or profitability.

Despite the rampant success of NM Online, NM's legacy Catalog division execs realized what the future held for them, and made a major power play to merge (eg, take over) the Online division. The two divisions previously shared back-end functions (fulfillment, shipping, customer service), so the "take over" was not about gaining efficiencies, synergies or otherwise saving money.

While NMG's board was smart about realizing the need to create a separate division to build a successful online presence, they retreated from their previously forward-thinking decision and allowed the catalog division to absorb the Online division. While online sales continued to grow, the executives who were recruited to build the online business ultimately departed NM, mostly to escape the new bureaucracy and find more entrepreneurial environments (similar to what was NM Online in its early years from 2000-2003).