By James R. Hagerty

As a history student at the University of Pittsburgh in the late 1950s and early 1960s, Burt Tansky wasn't sure what sort of career he would pursue.

There were clues, though. In his spare time, he earned money selling ice cream from a truck. At Pitt football games, he hawked pins and pennants. Selling turned out to be the essential skill for Tansky, who grew up in Pittsburgh's working-class East Liberty neighborhood as the son of an immigrant hairstylist.

After graduating in 1961, Tansky joined a Pittsburgh department store, Kaufmann's, as a management trainee.

"I liked the action at retail," he later told Women's Wear Daily. "I liked the momentum, the interaction with people."

Tansky, who died March 16 at the age of 87, became a buyer, managed a suburban Pittsburgh branch store, and then began moving around the country to work for other department stores, first in Boston and then in Dayton, Ohio. In 1974, he was hired by I. Magnin, a luxury retailer in San Francisco.

He had discovered his niche -- supplying luxury to big spenders. "That's when I found out that there is another way of life in the retail world," he told the Leadership Business Council in 2015. "For me, there was no turning back."

It's about 'want'

Success at Magnin propelled him to senior jobs in New York at Saks Fifth Avenue and Bergdorf Goodman. He moved to Dallas in 1994 as chief executive of the Neiman Marcus store chain, where he remained until retirement in 2010. (After a recent merger, Saks, Bergdorf Goodman and Neiman Marcus are now all owned by Saks Global.)

Neiman Marcus was founded in 1907 -- by Herbert Marcus, his sister Carrie Marcus Neiman and her husband, Abraham Lincoln "Al" Neiman -- to outfit oil tycoons. Herbert Marcus's son, Stanley Marcus, took charge of the store in 1950 and made it famous for lavish holiday catalogs featuring such gifts as a clock that ran backward (for the nostalgic), ermine bathrobes and matching his-and-hers live camels. "I have the simplest taste," the younger Marcus often said. "I am always satisfied with the best."

Tansky had a similar approach. "It's not about need, but about want," he told USA Today.

The Wall Street Journal described Tansky as courtly. Stanley Marcus praised him as "the kind of merchant who is going to look inside the pair of pants to see how well they're made."

Tansky focused on both the quality of the merchandise and the extravagance of the customer service. He encouraged the commissioned salespeople to build their own collections of loyal customers, to lavish them with attention, and to remember their birthdays and favorite styles.

Tansky sat in the front row at designer shows and cultivated close relations with the stars of the rag trade. In a 1994 interview with the Dallas Morning News, he remembered once having been asked by a reporter to talk about his favorite designers. "I named almost everybody," he said, "but I was in such a rush I left one designer out." The next day brought "the most blistering letter" from a representative of the scorned designer. It took a letter, a fax and a phone call from Tansky to patch things up.

During store visits, he liked inspecting shoe displays. "No woman has enough shoes. That's why I like the business," Tansky told WWD. "I can talk shoes. I can talk underwear. I can talk hats. I love to talk about the merchandise."

In presentations, he deployed his dry wit with the timing of a stand-up comedian. In his free time, he liked to drive Jaguars and Corvettes. A WWD reporter described Tansky speeding down a spiral parking ramp in his Corvette as if he were Steve McQueen in the movie "Bullitt." Leaning into the turns, Tansky told the reporter: "I pay attention to the walls, not the speed."

Newspapers and pennants

Burton Marvin Tansky, the oldest of three children, was born on Jan. 15, 1938. His father, Harry Tansky, and mother, Jeannette (Neistein) Tansky, had immigrated from Eastern Europe as children when their Jewish families fled religious persecution. Harry Tansky eventually ran a hairstyling shop at the posh William Penn Hotel in downtown Pittsburgh. Jeannette Tansky helped out in the shop.

From about age 12, young Burt delivered newspapers. While at Peabody High School, he dated Rita Bernstein. She helped make the pennants he sold at football games. They married several years later. She survives him, along with two children, three grandchildren, and a sister, Eva Blum.

Tansky's philanthropy included gifts to the University of Pittsburgh, the Jupiter Medical Center and the Kind Kitchen, a provider of meals to people facing hardships. In retirement, he took painting lessons and gave his abstract works to family members.

Tansky believed in the resiliency of the rich and didn't think they should be lured in hard times with anything so tacky as blowout sales or lower-quality merchandise. "We will never trade down," he told the retailer's board during the 2008-09 financial crisis.

That recession proved more traumatic than expected, however, even for Neiman customers. Tansky eventually felt compelled to reduce staffing by about 20%. The board persuaded him to add some lower-priced merchandise to the mix.

"The alligator belts are tightening," Tansky quipped.

Write to James R. Hagerty at reports@wsj.com

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March 26, 2025 10:00 ET (14:00 GMT)

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