Shopping Centers Today is the news magazine of the International Council of Shopping Centers (ICSC)
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58 S C T / N O V E M B E R 2 0 1 6 early 1970s. "My career started because of a little gag, if you want to know the truth," he said. To earn some extra money, Gorischek worked in the sporting-goods department at the Rike-Kumler Co., a department store in Dayton popularly know as Rike's. One painfully slow evening Gorischek grew rest- less and decided to have a bit of fun with some of the displays. He created a manne- quin from tissue paper and dressed it in a winter hat, ski goggles and ski gloves; then he positioned it on the second-floor balcony in such a way that it seemed to be peering down on the shoppers below. The next day, the store's display manager and corporate director asked Gorischek if he knew any- thing about the new feature. "I cautiously asked them why," Gorischek said. "If they didn't like it, I was going to pin it on my friend," he quipped. But it was quite the opposite: The executives were taken with Gorischek's creativity — and they paid him to keep doing it. "They opened the doors to the art of display for me," Gorischek said. After Rike's, Gorischek spent 15 years at department store chain Burdines, in Sarasota, Fla., moving up from visual stylist to visual manager to regional director. He landed at Neiman Marcus in 1992, where he worked his way up to vice president of store development. Part of Gorischek's re- sponsibility at Neiman Marcus was to create eye-catching displays that highlighted the merchandise in creative ways. "Stanley Mar- cus [store president from 1950 to 1972] used to always say that retail is a lot like a newspa- per," said Ginger Reeder, vice president of corporate public relations for Neiman Mar- cus. "The news is all the same. It's how you present it that makes it distinctive." One of Gorischek's most popular deci- sions was bringing back the Neiman Marcus "fortnight" display, an annual tradition: For two weeks the company's flagship Dallas store was transformed into a facsimile of some ex- otic place. The first year Gorischek chose to honor a destination dear to the company's heart: the state of Texas, erecting 6-foot-tall oil derrick replicas throughout the store that at the opening gala spewed thousands of pounds of black feathers out onto the guests. For the 1999 fortnight exhibition, Gorischek turned the main floor of the Dal- las store into an Italian village at dusk — even importing mask artists, fashion designers and puppeteers from Italy. Authenticity in visual merchandising has always been impor- tant to Gorischek. "People rely on you for inspiration and education," he said. "For in- stance, I consider styling a mannequin prop- erly an important form of education. If it's not styled properly, you could send someone out dressed incorrectly." The hardest part of the job is never any- thing tactical, he notes. Instead, it is "con- vincing those that need to approve a concept that it's a great idea, a big idea," he said. "If you can't sell an idea in its entirety, that's when things can start to get a little diluted." Gorischek has encountered little resistance to his ideas over the years, but he has often managed to work around even the little there has been. "I've found ways to come back and sneak it in," he said. After all, he says, figuring out how to stay true to the vision in one's head is an art of a whole different sort. S C T Talent pool • L M C o m m e r c i a l R e a l E s t a t e h i r e d A m y H a l l , CRX, CLS, SCD, as se- nior vice president of or- g a n i z a t i o n a n d p e o p l e . Hall has nearly 20 years of commercial real estate experience and will lead an aggressive expansion of the firm's brokerage division in the Chicago area. In the new position, she will oversee recruit- ment of new brokers, as well as training, perfor- mance management and strategic planning for the company. The firm cur- r e n t l y s e r v e s the Chicago metro and northwest I n d i a n a a r e a w i t h m o r e t h a n 1 5 0 a s s i g n - ments. Most re- cently, Hall was senior di- rector of local leasing for Barrington, Ill.–based GK Development. • K e n n e t h J . M a r s h a l l j o i n e d O l s h a n P r o p e r - ties as head of retail, a new position at the firm. He will work in the com- pany's Columbus, Ohio office and have respon- sibility for the firm's 10 million square feet of re- tail properties. Marshall most recently worked at retail REIT WP Glimcher as vice president of de- velopment. Prior to that, Marshall was executive vice president at Colonial Properties Trust. I consider styling a mannequin properly an important form of education