Word: bergdorfs
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...Fifth Avenue, Bergdorf's handsome, nine-story building is no less a landmark than the famed Vanderbilt mansion which it replaced 23 years ago. On Bergdorf's books are 48,000 active charge accounts of the royal and rich of the world, some of them adding up to $100,000 a year. Recently, when Haile Selassie wanted some finery for his court, he simply charged it up at Bergdorf's. Bergdorf...
...grandson of shopkeepers who would have been flabbergasted by his store's opulence. On his office wall hangs one of his father's ads: "Ladies wrappers at 37½" Edwin Goodman started out as a tailor working for Manhattan dressmaker Herman Bergdorf in a little gaslit shop on lower Fifth Avenue, soon bought into the business with $15,000 borrowed from relatives. One day, Goodman helped make a special suit for Bergdorf's sister, who was private secretary to Mrs. William Goadby Loew, a prominent society matron. Mrs. Loew admired the suit, spread the word among...
...Goodman's tailoring reputation grew (Bergdorf retired in 1903), he added new lines of furs, dresses and accessories. But his real success was based on a personal touch. A man came in to buy a coat for his wife, tried in vain to describe her proportions-until he spotted the store's 6 ft. 175 Ib. owner. "That's her size," said he. Goodman donned a mink, paraded around the store, and made the sale...
...such personalized service grew a selling system rarely found in U.S. retailing. At Bergdorf's, a big customer does not wander haphazardly from one salesgirl to the next: she is accompanied everywhere in the store by a "vendeuse" who knows and has memorized her tastes. Bergdorf's vendeuses are sometimes as well known as their customers (on Bergdorf's payroll now: Mrs. Geoffrey Gates, the ex-Mrs. Harry Hopkins, Author Kay -Eisenhower Was My Boss-Summers-by) and sometimes too hoity-toity even for Bergdorf's. When the Grand Duchess
Marie of Russia sold at Bergdorf's, she didn't go to the customer: she sat and waited for customers to be brought to her by other salesgirls...