DALLAS — Neiman Marcus Direct is expecting.
The luxury merchant today plans to begin selling maternity clothing on its Web site, a first for the direct marketer as it continues to develop its special sizes business.
“The Web allows us to do certain things that floor space limitations don’t allow in brick and mortar,” said Gerald Barnes, senior vice president and general merchandise manager at NM Direct. “We fully expect it to be successful because we do feel the maternity market, especially at the upper end, is underserved, and we have a large enough customer base to support this kind of merchandise, even though it’s a very segmented market.”
The site offers about 120 pieces of maternity wear, from casual Capri pants to polished dresses and sportswear.
“It’s denim to dresses, and we’re looking at evening, but mostly it’s daytime,” Barnes said. “It’s a Neiman Marcus take on what you should be wearing as a maternity customer.”
The site’s marquee maternity label is Homme Mummy, a British brand that has been spotted on celebrities, including Katie Holmes. The site offers about 10 Homme Mummy outfits.
The online maternity shop also sells looks by Juicy Couture, Bella Dahl, Three Dots, Citizens of Humanity and Ruby Van. Diane von Furstenberg will be added in the spring.
Neiman’s isn’t planning to promote the shop other than to flag it on the bottom of the home page. Shoppers can click on the category as a box under both the Women’s Apparel and Special Sizes sections of the Web site.
Barnes said the category could be profitable as long as Neiman’s judges demand correctly. He didn’t specify a sales projection. For the fiscal year ended July 31, NM Direct did $592 million, more than half of that in online sales, which includes the Horchow Collection home decor and Bergdorf Goodman Web sites.
Customers didn’t request maternity wear — employees did.
“All of our market research was done with people here at Neiman Marcus who were pregnant and felt there wasn’t a place for them to go shop to get the type of merchandise they wanted,” Barnes explained.
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Though Neiman’s stores don’t stock maternity clothing and have no plans to do so, sales associates will be able to show this merchandise to customers via the Web site and order it through a special phone number.
“It’s part of our multiprong, multichannel strategy that can tie everything together,” Barnes said. “The site is growing to the point where we have the time to really get into some finer points and add things we feel round out the site.”
Special sizes have proved a strong opportunity online for Neiman’s, which offers petites and large sizes up to 3X on the site, he added.
“The whole special-size category is expanded far beyond the store assortment on the Web site … and as part of the multichannel strategy, it made sense to extend it onto the Web,” Barnes said.