Neiman Marcus' Christmas catalog is legendary. But this year, for the first time, customers are doing more shopping on Neiman's Web sites than through its catalogs.

Likewise, J.C. Penney Co. expects its online sales to exceed its catalog volume this year or next.

Both Dallas-Fort Worth department store chains are multi-channel pioneers, with mature catalog operations in place long before online shopping took hold. They're both finding younger shoppers and new customers online.

Still, neither company is ready to stop publishing paper catalogs.

"The way we view print and Internet is that they work together. If someone has a catalog at home, she may flip through it and then go shopping online," said John W. Irvin, president of J.C. Penney Direct, the Plano company's catalog and Internet division. "Having a catalog in her mailbox and in her home is important to us, but we don't have to publish them as big anymore."

Neiman Marcus sees its catalogs and Web sites as selling and marketing tools that generate store traffic. Those multi-channel customers spend more on average than its single-channel customers do – 3.6 times more in its fiscal 2006 that ended in July.

"It's a staggering number of shoppers who say they browse online to determine what they were going to purchase and then go to a store and buy it," said Billy J. Payton, senior vice president at Brierley & Partners, a loyalty program firm.

And the multi-channel retailer "gets a bigger share of their customers' total 'spend,' " he said.

About 22 percent of offline sales are influenced by the Web, according to Shop.org, an online retailers association.

And it's a driver for new customers. More than one-third of online customers are new to a company's entire business.

Dallas-based Neiman Marcus Inc. "has found that mailing catalogs leads to those people placing orders online," said Susan Jansen, a Lehman Brothers analyst who follows Neiman Marcus' high-yield debt. "The best way to look at it is as a combined business, and what is encouraging is that, overall, the direct business is growing rapidly."

The luxury retailer is also finding a new customer base online that it's calling "the emerging elite," said Burt Tansky, chief executive of Neiman Marcus. "Pockets of customers are starting to emerge as loyal, dedicated weekly shoppers," he said.

And they are younger, about 39 or 40, versus the store customer average age of 48, said Brendan Hoffman, president and CEO of Neiman Marcus Direct. "They are also shopping with us 24/7 from wherever they are and anytime they want. It's like a candy store. We're feeding their desires for Blahniks and every other brand they want."

Mr. Hoffman attributes online growth to more broadband access. At the end of March 2006, 42 percent of Americans had high-speed Internet at home, up from 30 percent in March 2005, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project.

"Two important things are working in our favor. People are more confident online, and so many more homes have high-speed Internet," Mr. Hoffman said. "At first, we counted on people shopping us from the office. Now they're shopping with us longer because they're doing it nights and weekends when they have more time."

Neiman Marcus catalog and Internet sales, which include Horchow and Bergdorf Goodman direct sales, together generated revenue of $655.3 million in the fiscal year ended in July, up from $592.1 million last year. Online sales rose 32 percent to $405.7 million.

Neiman Marcus plans to beef up its online technology to help convert more browsers into customers, Mr. Tansky said.

The focus will be on that emerging elite, he said. Relationship building has translated into huge sales at Neiman Marcus. Its 100,000 InCircle loyalty program customers generated sales of $1.3 billion last year, he said.

Neiman Marcus, taken private last year by Texas Pacific Group and Warburg Pincus, has stepped up its growth plans, saying last month its namesake chain can go from the current 38 stores to 50 or more, and it's planning to open a dozen more clearance Last Call stores.

Penney's Christmas catalog is shrinking. It's 336 pages this year compared with 440 last year, and every page has a reference to more merchandise available on jcp.com.

Penney's fall and spring Big Books have also been losing pages, with the current edition at 970 pages, down from 1,090 a year ago, and 1,390 in 2000.

Meanwhile, Penney has technology helping to move its online sales ahead.

"This fall we've had some stabilization in the print catalog, but it's still shifting over to online, and we expect if not this year, it will be next year when online sales are bigger than print sales," Mr. Irvin said.

Penney's online sales increased 28 percent last year to $1.038 billion, and catalog sales were $1.8 billion.

Mr. Irvin is confident because over the summer, Penney completed installing 35,000 new cash registers in its stores with direct links to its Web site. That means that at the register, shoppers can order items not in stock.

"This will be the first holiday shopping season that we truly have all the points connected," Mr. Irvin said. "This is really a multi-channel Christmas for us."

Neiman Marcus and J.C. Penney have a "trifecta, so to speak, and once they've established that presence online, it's hard to see it evaporate because it's so dynamic," Ms. Jansen said.

E-mail mhalkias@dallasnews.com

Headquarters: Irving

Top executive: Brendan Hoffman

Sales in fiscal 2006 (ending in July): $655.3 million, or 16 percent of parent Neiman Marcus Inc. sales

Web rank: No. 37 in Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, with sales of $405.7 million

Operations: Neiman Marcus, Horchow, Bergdorf Goodman catalogs and Web sites. Runs online sites and backroom fulfillment work for almost a dozen designers, including David Yurman and Salvatore Ferragamo.

Coming soon: Plans to launch a clearance Web site.

History: Catalog started with famous Christmas Book in 1926. Became famous in the 1950s and 1960s with whimsical and expensive gifts.

Interesting facts: More than 1 million customers made a purchase through catalogs or Web sites last year. More than 100 million catalogs were circulated. Sends out new fashion trends almost daily to more than 2.3 million e-mail addresses.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research

Headquarters: Plano

Top executive: John W. Irvin

2005 sales: $2.84 billion, or 15 percent of total J.C. Penney Co. sales.

Web rank: No. 13 in Internet Retailer Top 500 Guide, with sales of $1.038 billion

Operations: Operates jcpenney.com; produces Fall and Spring Big Books, Christmas catalog and several specialty catalogs.

Bigger reach: Online and catalog shopping is now available on all 35,000 cash registers in its stores.

History: Penney’s catalog grew rapidly after 1993 and displaced Sears as the largest catalog operation when the Chicago-based retailer shutdown its catalog that year.

Interesting facts: An early adopter of new sales technologies, it was one of the first major chains to sell online. Before the Internet, it tried selling merchandise on interactive TV in a test with 150 Denton residents in 1994. In the late 1980s, it spent $100 million on Telaction Corp., its own interactive shopping service.

SOURCE: Dallas Morning News research