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Neiman Marcus trades 3 percent of workforce for cash to invest in expansion

By Angela Gonzalez-Rodriguez

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American luxury retailer Neiman Marcus started October by laying off 500 corporate and support staff, therefore eliminating the retail jobs of about 3 percent of its workforce of 16,000 staff, as it tries to cut costs to pay for new stores and acquisitions.

“Even as we adjust our course, our mission is unchanged,” stated the company´s top executive. “Every employee of Neiman Marcus Group has a single focus: our customer. We remain dedicated to serving them by offering the most incredible luxury and fashion merchandise in the world’s most beautiful stores and dynamic websites.”

As further explained by the retailer, the employee cutbacks will affect retail jobs across all stores, divisions and facilities, reports ‘LP Magazine’.

The management decision comes just two months after the Dallas-based chain filed an initial public offering to raise as much as 100 million dollars. In this regard, Karen Katz, president and chief executive officer of the Dallas-based company said that “A key part of this is about reinvestment back into the business.” “Essentially, we did our strategic plan a number of months ago…One of the initiatives is called ‘organizing for growth,’ which is about improving ways to run our business to allow us to accelerate investments in customer-facing initiatives.”

Katz states that the re-organisation will allow Neiman Marcus to invest in growth initiatives such as the acquisition last year of German online retailer MyTheresa and new and remodelled stores. Katz also hinted that “there is a possibility” of additional acquisitions, but she did not specify what kind would be most likely.

The hundred years old omni-channel luxury fashion retailer posted circa 4.8 billion dollars in revenues for fiscal year 2014. Comparable sales for its fiscal year 2014 grew 3.9 percent, boosted by a 26.3 percent jump in online sales. Revenue came in at 5.1 billion dollars on profit of 14.9 million dollars for the year.

In this vein, is worth of recalling that Neiman Marcus currently holds a long-term debt of 4.55 billion dollars, on which it paid 289.9 million dollars in interest alone last year.

Newman Marcus