Roger Horchow

S. Roger Horchow died of cancer on May 2 2020 at his home in Dallas He was 91. In 1971, after a decade at Neiman Marcus, Mr. Horchow founded the Horchow Collection, a mail-order business aimed at the middle and upper-middle classes that sold jewelry, housewares, furniture, clothes and more. He sold the business to Neiman Marcus in 1988 for $117 million. By then he had already done a little investing in Broadway shows — he said that the $15,000 he put into “Les Miserables,” which opened in 1987, earned him a 600 percent profit. The came “Crazy for You,” with songs by the Gershwins (some from “Girl Crazy,” some from other sources), a book by Ken Ludwig and lots of input from Mr. Horchow, who brought to the business of constructing a musical the gut instincts he had used to select items for his catalogs. Samuel Roger Horchow was born on July 3, 1928, in Cincinnati. His father, Reuben, was a lawyer and state official. His mother, Beatrice Schwartz Horchow, was a concert pianist, which is how Gershwin came to be playing in the family’s home, invited there after a concert. Mr. Horchow graduated from Yale University in 1950 with a degree in sociology, then served in the Army Security Agency during the Korean War. He was a buyer for Foley’s department stores in Houston from 1953 to 1960, then went to work for Neiman Marcus as merchandise director. Mr. Horchow’s wife of 49 years, Carolyn Pfeifer Horchow, who worked closely with him on the Horchow Collection, died in 2009. He is survived by three daughters, Regen Fearon, Lizzie Routman and Sally Horchow, and five granddaughters.