Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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RET AILING TODA Y Up close and personal FEMALE SHOPPERS PRIZE INTIMACY'S PERSONALIZED SERVICE By Dees Stribling A tive to Susan Nethero, who thought it was causing women a lot of discomfort. European lingerie shops, especially those in France, treat their customers very differently, she observed. And since women are all sized and shaped differ- ently — which, it may surprise some to learn, is not always acknowledged by the designers of women's clothes — French lingerie shops frequently advise on size selection, the correct way to wear the bra and the proper means of caring for it. Often this involves having a bra- fit specialist assisting customers right 50 SCT / MAY 2012 in the dressing room, built to be more spacious and accommodating than the smallish rooms in American shops. In 1992 Susan Nethero opened the WOMAN VISITING AN Intimacy bra shop does more than just walk out with a brassiere or two. She can do that just about anywhere. No, at Intimacy this woman receives some careful attention, in the form of a personalized bra-fitting. Typically, American lingerie shops, even the elegant ones with personable sales associates, offer up bras the way they would any other apparel item. At such a shop, if the customer likes a particular bra, she chooses the appropri- ate size (or so she thinks — more on that later), buys it and leaves. This approach seemed rather primi- first Intimacy shop, in a new wing of the upscale Phipps Plaza, in the Buckhead neighborhood of Atlanta. In time the shop gained a local following, and Susan Nethero's husband, David, joined the business in 2001 to oversee growth be- yond Atlanta. "Our first expansion was into New York City, where we acquired a small location at 90th and Madison, on the Upper East Side, in 2004," he said. "The store did well, but what really put us on the map was getting the atten- tion of Oprah Winfrey." Intimacy caught the eye of the edi- tors of O, The Oprah Magazine, and Winfrey herself liked the idea of bra- fitting so much that she went for one. She then had the women on her show