Intimacy picks NorthPark as eighth lingerie store location
Susan Nethero is bringing her bra revolution to Dallas.
Intimacy – her lingerie store opening at NorthPark Center on Aug. 18 – is the biggest thing to happen to bras since Victoria's Secret displayed them in the windows of every mall in America.
Nethero is the exclusive bra fit expert on Lifetime TV's How to Look Good Naked, where she earned the nickname "bra whisperer" from host Carson Kressley.
Bras were her business long before she landed on The Oprah Winfrey Show, The Tyra Banks Show, The Today Show and What Not to Wear.
Nethero, who trained under the Queen of England's royal bra fitter, June Kenton, founder of London-based Rigby & Peller, has even written a book on the topic.
She created a retail concept around the goal of making women more comfortable by giving them the right bra size – something that 85 percent of women apparently don't know.
The Dallas store, the company's eighth, is just across the corridor from NorthPark's Victoria's Secret.
Intimacy stores are about 3,000 square feet and generate sales per square foot in the range of $2,500 to $3,000 per year. The company's store in New York has sales that are $3,700 a square foot. (Victoria's Secret stores, which are 8,000 to 10,000 square feet, posted sales per square foot last year of $620 – twice the average mall store.)
Intimacy plans to be a 25- to 30-store chain in five years.
Nethero opened the first Intimacy store in Atlanta in 1992 after her husband was transferred there. Almost 40 years old with two daughters and a marketing career behind her that included private consulting and stints at Xerox Corp. and Time Inc., Nethero said she wanted to use her marketing expertise to build something that was her own.
On trips to Europe, she gained an appreciation for how European women seek "the right shape from a bra and appreciate the benefits of a well-fitting bra."
So how has Nethero revolutionized bra shopping?
She learned to do a fitting without a tape measure from the queen's royal bra fitter, recommends that women own a bra wardrobe and offers free alterations for the life of a bra.
Nethero trains all employees herself. Stores carry 95 bra sizes in cups A-K. Bras retail from $50 to $250, and most are European brands.
To get fitted, shoppers fill out a questionnaire online or in the store that becomes part of a 30-minute consultation.
Reservations are recommended, but walk-ins are welcome. "Some come and sign in and go to lunch or a movie, or just shop, and we call them on their cellphones when we're ready," Nethero said.
When Intimacy stores open in other markets, all bra sellers' sales get a lift, she said. After her first appearance on Oprah in 2005, bra sales jumped $700 million nationwide to almost $14 billion as women became more aware that they are probably in the wrong bra size.
