Crossing Fifth Avenue to Bergdorf Goodman

Ira Neimark was born in Brooklyn, New York on December 12, 1921. He left high school at the age of 16 to work at Bonwit Teller, a luxury department store on Fifth Avenue. He started out as a pageboy and a door boy and worked his way up to working in the handbag department followed by an office assistant. He left the store to join the Army Air Forces, where he trained as a pilot and served in the Pacific during World War II.

After the war, he worked for Gladdings department store and B. Altman, before becoming the president of Bergdorf Goodman in 1975. He turned the store into the standard-bearer for luxury shopping. He retired from Bergdorf in 1992. He was also a director of Hermès in Paris and an adjunct professor at Columbia Business School. His book, Crossing Fifth Avenue to Bergdorf Goodman: An Insider's Account on the Rise of Luxury Retailing, was published in 2006. He died on April 18, 2019 at the age of 97.

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