DALLAS — Stanley Korshak owner Crawford Brock turns 69 this month, but he but can’t fathom the concept of retirement.

The truth is, he’s within the midst of a $5 million renovation of the posh fashion emporium that he thinks will help boost annual revenue by 50 percent beyond its current $50 million in 10 years.

“I’m going to rent the very best people and put this on a 10-year track — or a 25-year track for a generational business — and I’m not gonna hand over,” Brock said. “I’m going to stick with it.”

The pivot point was a 15-year lease that could be prolonged to 25, which Brock signed last July for Korshak’s home at The Crescent, an upscale hotel, office and retail complex that’s locally owned by John Goff and Richard Rainwater.

“With runway like that, you possibly can do all of the stuff you’ve dreamed about doing,” Brock said.

The vision is to update the general look with lighter hues and furnishings and colourful commissioned artwork, just like the newly installed Venetian glass sculpture that evokes a double helix and hangs in the middle of the atrium. 

The plan also calls for brand new Brunello Cucinelli, Kiton and Cesare Attolini shops and an authentic Italian cafe with tables that spill into The Crescent’s fountain courtyard. It’s a pet project for Brock, who loves homemade pasta.

In the ladies’s fashion department on the second floor, two curved partitions will likely be removed to enhance sight lines and expose large windows. The designer area will get two more fitting rooms plus a spacious private VIP suite with two large dressing rooms, a three-way mirror and a sitting area.

Coming early next yr is a bridge that crosses the atrium to forge a second link between the ladies’s designer and contemporary departments, that are on opposite sides of the upper level.

“We’re knee-deep in all those changes now,” Brock said. “It’s very exciting.”

The facelift will add only about 1,500 square feet to the shop’s 33,000 square feet of selling space, said Brock.

“We’re repurposing space in order that it functions higher,” he explained.

Like Brock, who got here to administer Korshak in 1987 from the stand-alone Neiman Marcus store in Beverly Hills, all three of the corporate’s top merchandise managers are Neiman’s veterans together with renovation consultant Ignaz Gorischek, who formerly worked for a long time in store design and visual merchandising at the posh department store.

“I’ll double the ladies’s business now that I’m here,” said Rachel Goldberger, who joined Korshak in February as vice chairman and divisional merchandise manager of ladies’s ready-to-wear and earlier in her profession was a DMM at Neiman Marcus.

Just accomplished are fresh Cucinelli shops for men and girls within the brand’s signature cream and charcoal decor. The lads’s Cucinelli boutique commands prime placement next to Korshak’s front entrance and encompasses a bar with leather stools.

Korshak is “probably the most beautiful American multi-brand stores,” Brunello Cucinelli said in an interview. “We now have an awesome business with them, and Crawford is an individual of taste, very smart, quick and young in his head. He has a young mind set.”

Martha Leonard, senior vice chairman and general merchandise manager, claimed Korshak has the best sell-through of Cucinelli of any multibrand store within the country.

“It resonates with our clients since it builds upon itself season after season — every part sort of goes together,” Leonard said. 

Next to the ladies’s Cucinelli area on the upper level is a latest women’s shop for Kiton. Korshak has long had a powerful men’s business with the brand’s made-to-measure clothing, which it carries exclusively in Dallas, and Kiton’s women’s collection has  “exploded,” Brock said.

The shop offers rtw and made-to-measure dresses, jackets and sportswear, Goldberger explained.

“It was really tailored and jacket driven, but now it’s soft and female, and the standard is beyond,” she said.

A latest shop for Sylva & Cie — Korshak’s top advantageous jewelry vendor — was celebrated with a May 11 party for Los Angeles designer Sylva Yepremian, one among the few jewelers who doesn’t sell via her own website.

A variety of clients collect Sylva’s pricey, one-of-a-kind jewel encrusted skulls, and the road sells across the board to all ages, noted Korshak’s longtime jewelry buyer Melissa Geiser.

As well as, the Attolini shop of men’s tailored clothing from Naples is barely the second in a U.S. multibrand retailer after Bergdorf Goodman.

In recent times, Leonard and Brock have focused on increasing gross margin and dropped brands that demanded greater orders without regard to prior sell-throughs.

“We’re chasing vendors that we wish to be great partners,” Brock said, “and subsequently our margin last yr ran up 53 percent.”

Korshak just introduced Borgo De Nor’s colourful print dresses to the selling floor and is adding 10 latest designer and eight contemporary women’s collections for fall, Leonard noted.

Business has been strong, posting the best revenue ever in 2022, followed by record-setting months in January, February and April, Brock said.

“We’re selling fashion and femininity and seeing a resurgence in suiting and solid monochromatic dressing,” Leonard said. “We’ve had an actual uptick in latest clients from people moving to Dallas from the East Coast or West Coast and people who find themselves on the town for events. Individuals are able to buy. They only want something latest, not for a date or a vacation or a marriage.”

Brock credits men’s DMM and planning director Alex Lancaster with doubling the lads’s business up to now two years largely by motivating the salespeople and inspiring collaboration.

“Alex showed up, and in a pleasant, firm, direct way [got them] all on board, they usually don’t wish to disappoint her,” Brock said.

Every men’s vendor offers made-to-measure and the shop routinely sells custom suits for $15,000, Brock said.

“Our clients have closets filled with clothes, they usually wish to buy what they need,” he said. “They aren’t focused on how much it costs.”

Brock’s youngest daughter, Helen Calen, is the one one among the three who has consistently worked in the shop. She has cycled through a lot of roles, including as accessories buyer, and is working with Leonard as a financial analyst.

Brock, who bought the business from oil heiress Caroline Hunt in 2002, still refers back to the counsel he received from late retail guru Stanley Marcus, who consulted for him for eight years starting in 1988.

“You will have to develop relationships and construct the business one brick at a time, and that’s working,” he said. “It’s Stanley’s shopkeeper concept.”