Neiman Marcus sells distribution centers in Irving and Longview

TX – Neiman Marcus is selling distribution centers in Irving and Longview and plans to use the money to start spending $85 million over the next two years modernizing its supply chain.

The buildings are under contract with undisclosed buyers and the transactions are expected to close at the end of the month, the Dallas-based luxury retailer said.

The Longview facility will operate through this year’s holiday shopping season and the Irving warehouse will stay open until fall 2022, the company said. Neiman Marcus put the two buildings up for sale last year. Employees will be offered severance and some will be able to transfer.

The retailer is going from four to two distribution centers, but the technology it is adding will make its operations more productive and able to handle future growth, said Willis Weirich, executive vice president of group operations and chief supply chain officer.

“It’s about having the right capacity to support growth,” said Weirich, who has been at Neiman Marcus for five years and before that was at Target, where he held executive positions in logistics.

Neiman Marcus said it is consolidating operations to its 470,250-square-foot Pinnacle Park distribution center in West Dallas and a 500,000-square-foot distribution center in Pittston, Pa. The facility in the Northeast is moving from a smaller 200,000-square-foot building in the same industrial park.

The overhaul of the retailer’s supply chain was in the works before the pandemic and last year’s bankruptcy reorganization. CEO Geoffroy van Raemdonck wants stores and online operations to become a seamless digital selling platform for customers.

“We want to operate at the highest level with technology and systems that improve the speed of time it takes to get goods to the stores and to customers,” Weirich said.

The two distribution centers will serve both the company’s 38 Neiman Marcus and Bergdorf Goodman stores and online fulfillment operations. Most of the retail industry operates facilities dedicated to one or the other.

Before the pandemic, the two facilities being sold employed 1,700 people, about 250 in Longview and the rest in Irving. But most of the Irving employees were unrelated to the distribution center operations. The property was built in the 1980s with offices on the second floor to house the catalog division and in recent years that space was used for IT and customer service employees.

No decision has been made about where those offices will move. Some jobs may permanently shift to workers’ homes.

Some of the Longview employees who manage the flow of merchandise on computers, have been working from home and will not have to move to keep their jobs.

“We intend to retain the logistics team in Longview. The group of people who manage goods to and from facilities in this world we’re living in can continue to work remotely,” Weirich said.