Word: katze
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NAME KAREN KATZ...
...anywhere else. But another part is the early stages of a very deliberate step-up in luxury for the place that over the past 100 years has set out to define it. And the world is primed for what Neiman Marcus Stores president and ceo Karen Katz calls "high luxury": the number of households worth more than $5 million is greater than ever before, and the consumer has an increased appetite for all things luxe, thanks to the instant mass exposure of today's runways and red carpets...
...Many other retailers have jumped on the luxury bandwagon, wanting to get their piece of the action. It's forced us to say, 'Where do we go?' And we're kind of moving up," says Katz. "We've decided there's this category we've named 'high luxury.' It's even more luxurious, more unique, harder to get. We want to sit at the top of the luxury mountain," she says. "We're pushing higher, to find that even rarer...
...Katz, who has spent the past 22 years at Neiman Marcus, is clearly the one to do it. Having worn every hat from merchandise manager to V.P. of handbags and designer accessories to senior V.P. of stores, she took the reins of the company's e-commerce business in 2000, when flat-screen fashion was designers' biggest phobia. She turned it into a half-billion-dollar branch of the business, with every name in the industry on board. And she has presided over the now 39 Neiman Marcus stores for the past five years, a period when unequaled media attention...
However, top on the agenda are always luxury and its core customer. And she has changed too. "She's a 50-year-old woman who has the attitude of a 30-year-old and in many cases the body of a 35-year-old," Katz says. She is also fluent in Chanel, conversational in Marni, and Thakoon curious. "And, obviously, you have to have a certain amount of affluence to afford the kinds of things we have to offer," says the Texas-born Katz, who began her career as a buyer at Foley's in Houston and whose second favorite...