Macy’s 2020

Predicting the demise of Sears & Kmart since 2017!
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by Romr123 »

Bingo--only viable malls for Dillards to enter are the A malls and no space in 'em; and onesie/twosie aren't going to move the needle for them.
ClownLoach wrote: January 17th, 2023, 5:07 pm I really do think that it is too late for Dillard's to arrive in SoCal proper because of the damage inflicted on the malls by the near monopoly of Macy's. Their underwhelming selection, incompetent size management, and wild inconsistencies between locations soured customers on their stores, and as such their stores don't bring significant traffic to the entire mall now. Traffic is so poor outside of the few remaining "A" malls that Dillard's would be foolish to sign a lease or acquire a building in any of them. And the "A" malls don't have space for Dillard's. To make any meaningful arrival in SoCal they would need to get enough stores opened all at once to be able to market their presence and I just don't see that happening. They would be crazy to open in anything but "A" malls and the only way they would get space is if they could partner with Macy's to get them to free up a building. I don't see them working together as such activities could be considered anticompetitive by the FTC even though the end result would be introduction of new competition. I think Macy's has been holding out hoping they can sell duplicate buildings to non-traditional mall retailers, but those mall openings are drying up (movie theaters, Whole Foods, big fitness centers, Dicks Sporting Goods). Their decades of monopoly power are leading to their own demise. Unfortunately they are taking down a lot of malls with them.

The only way I see them arriving would be to get into smaller media markets and surround LA, expanding there last. Maybe if they were to enter San Diego County and Ventura/Santa Barbara... But again the properties they would work out in lack available space or are too far on the path to obsolescence (like the mall in Santa Barbara).
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by rwsandiego »

ClownLoach wrote: January 17th, 2023, 5:07 pm I really do think that it is too late for Dillard's to arrive in SoCal proper because of the damage inflicted on the malls by the near monopoly of Macy's. Their underwhelming selection, incompetent size management, and wild inconsistencies between locations soured customers on their stores, and as such their stores don't bring significant traffic to the entire mall now. Traffic is so poor outside of the few remaining "A" malls that Dillard's would be foolish to sign a lease or acquire a building in any of them. And the "A" malls don't have space for Dillard's. To make any meaningful arrival in SoCal they would need to get enough stores opened all at once to be able to market their presence and I just don't see that happening. They would be crazy to open in anything but "A" malls and the only way they would get space is if they could partner with Macy's to get them to free up a building. I don't see them working together as such activities could be considered anticompetitive by the FTC even though the end result would be introduction of new competition. I think Macy's has been holding out hoping they can sell duplicate buildings to non-traditional mall retailers, but those mall openings are drying up (movie theaters, Whole Foods, big fitness centers, Dicks Sporting Goods). Their decades of monopoly power are leading to their own demise. Unfortunately they are taking down a lot of malls with them.

The only way I see them arriving would be to get into smaller media markets and surround LA, expanding there last. Maybe if they were to enter San Diego County and Ventura/Santa Barbara... But again the properties they would work out in lack available space or are too far on the path to obsolescence (like the mall in Santa Barbara).
You're right. In San Diego, I cold see them having opened in the UTC Robinsons-May space or Macy's re-branding that store - it's way better than their store and Dillard's renovating the Macy's. Other than that the only mall I could see them in is Fashion Valley and there was no room for them because the R-M was converted to a Bloomingdale's. I'm not familiar enough with the Inland Empire to say where they could have opened there. I could see them in the Palm Desert mall though.

Macy's in San Diego county are pretty dismal. They FINALLY gave UTC a fresh coat of paint, but it really wasn't a remodel. Fashion Valley is much nicer than UTC, but that's not saying much.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

Romr123 wrote: January 17th, 2023, 5:13 pm Bingo--only viable malls for Dillards to enter are the A malls and no space in 'em; and onesie/twosie aren't going to move the needle for them.

I guess my comment on the onesie-twosie is they already have 3 CA Stores: El Centro, Palmdale, and Stockton. I see no reason why they couldn't add a few more stores. They have a distribution center in Phoenix that is used to supply these stores.

Does Dillard's do any marketing for the 3 current CA Stores? Their Reno Store gets very little marketing- some full page newspaper ads sometimes, if that. They rely on collecting phone numbers and in some cases sending cards to customers to inform them of promotions. Based on Dillard's marketing strategy (seems to be- we are here, and we are selling clothes), I don't think getting a critical mass of stores in the market is necessarily required. They don't seem to blow a bunch of money on marketing the way Macy's does/did.

I don't expect we will ever see them do a major scale CA expansion. They open a couple new stores a year if that. At some point maybe a couple of those stores will be in CA.

Stockton is a little unique- you have Macy's, Sears, Dillards, and JCP still all there in the same shopping area (two different malls). Not many places in the US where you can see all 4 department stores together and open anymore and it used to be a very common picture.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by Alpha8472 »

Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California has 2 Macy's, Sears, and JCPenney. Before 1996, the Macy's Men's was Emporium Capwell.

This is a decently busy mall these days. If one of these stores were to close, a new anchor could move in.
Last edited by Alpha8472 on January 19th, 2023, 12:22 am, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

Alpha8472 wrote: January 18th, 2023, 2:08 am Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California has 2 Macy's, Sears, and JCPenney. Before 1996, the Macy's Men's was Emporium Capwell.

This is a decently busy mall these days. If one of these stores were to close, a new anchor move in.
I think it could be quite strategic for Dillard's to acquire that Concord Sears and build a store of their own there. I wonder if Sears owns that property. Dillard's owns most of its stores. I think the Sears footprint is too large for them as that Sears is massive. If Dillard's can be successful in Stockton, they can certainly be successful in Concord, and there may even be a bit of shared media between those two markets.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by Super S »

storewanderer wrote: January 18th, 2023, 11:43 pm
Alpha8472 wrote: January 18th, 2023, 2:08 am Sunvalley Mall in Concord, California has 2 Macy's, Sears, and JCPenney. Before 1996, the Macy's Men's was Emporium Capwell.

This is a decently busy mall these days. If one of these stores were to close, a new anchor move in.
I think it could be quite strategic for Dillard's to acquire that Concord Sears and build a store of their own there. I wonder if Sears owns that property. Dillard's owns most of its stores. I think the Sears footprint is too large for them as that Sears is massive. If Dillard's can be successful in Stockton, they can certainly be successful in Concord, and there may even be a bit of shared media between those two markets.
I wonder about the last surviving Sears in my area, at Southcenter. It is a three story building and previously was a Frederick & Nelson store. It seems like this one could be a good fit for Dillard's if they wanted to enter this part of the Pacific Northwest. They do have a location in Boise.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

Super S wrote: January 19th, 2023, 7:58 am

I wonder about the last surviving Sears in my area, at Southcenter. It is a three story building and previously was a Frederick & Nelson store. It seems like this one could be a good fit for Dillard's if they wanted to enter this part of the Pacific Northwest. They do have a location in Boise.
I think that would be a very good entry point for Dillard's into WA. Dillard's also is in Missoula, expanded its store there in 2019.

Dillard's is very shrewd when it comes to real estate, they will hold out for the best deal.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by buckguy »

You can imagine any number of futures for them, but it's unlikely that Dillard's is going anywhere. Dillard's hasn't entered a major market on its own since its entry into Atlanta, over 20 years ago. They considered picking up stores when BonTon imploded, but didn't and their last significant store acquisitions were about 20 years ago. They trcently did pickup some Sears stores that they've used relocate existing stores. They've closed more stores than they've opened and a number of their new stores are either second location in malls or replacements for existing stores. Still this ends up being a handful of new stores and they seem to neglect stores as long as possible. The last remodel I saw was cheap and glitzy whereas they'd previously gone for the kind of understated remodels that May did shortly before they merged with Federated. They were the last major retailer to develop an app and still don't really have a truly integrated multi-platform business. The profits go to buy back stock, raising the family's dividends rather than getting invested in the business. Their profits hit a long slide before COVID and they benefited from shortages in key areas, reducing their promotions. As things return to normal that will be difficult to sustain.

The property part of the business is a real estate trust and probably readily separable from the retail business. Other family-owned, usually more localized, department store chains kept the their real estate in the family after selling the business and that may be one strategy the Dillards might use. They self-insure, which probably means they have an investment portfolio that the family would want to keep.

Belk's seemed interested in actually running a business and going into new directions while the family still owned it. Dillard was/is a contrast with that. Instead they run it a bit like private equity would and at some point, I wouldn't be surprised if they dumped the retail and kept the rest, esp if they could figure out how to get value out of the real esatte onceprivate equity runs the stores into the ground.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

buckguy wrote: January 20th, 2023, 2:44 pm You can imagine any number of futures for them, but it's unlikely that Dillard's is going anywhere. Dillard's hasn't entered a major market on its own since its entry into Atlanta, over 20 years ago.
What major markets has Macy's, JCP, or even Nordstrom (not Rack, but the standard Nordstrom) organically expanded into (not by way of merger) in the past 20 years? I think, virtually none.

What secondary markets has Macy's, JCP, or even Nordstrom (not Rack) organically expanded into (not by way of merger) in the past 20 years? Again I think that is going to be almost none.

But Dillard's is a little different. They have organically expanded into multiple new markets in the past 20 years with nice new stores. A lot of secondary markets but I believe they have built some new stores in growing cities in TX, GA, AZ, and UT that are larger markets.

Recently opened in Grand Junction, CO. Opening soon in Sioux Falls, SD. Also building a new store in Lubbock, TX (maybe this is a relocation).

Yes they have closed more stores than they've opened but that is no different from their competitors.

Dillard's has little to no debt and owns most of their real estate, and also owns the construction company that handles their capital projects. The business is boring and the family may not be trying to run any fireworks displays but I think as long as the business throws off cash they will keep letting it do what it does. And doing what it does means continuing to open a few new stores in new markets here and there in the future.

If Dillard's had been run financially like various regional department store chains (high debt, not owning real estate, sale-leaseback transactions, constant management changes, etc.), they would have gone out of business long ago. The whole reason Dillard's is able to operate today is due to having a very solid financial foundation from which it operates its business. They may not be the best retailer but they know how to keep their affairs in order to stay in business and throw cash back to the founding family.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by J-Man »

Macy's Eagle Rock Plaza (Los Angeles, a former May Co.) is closing in September. There are two much nicer Macy's stores nearby, at the Glendale Galleria (former Broadway) and in Pasadena (former Bullock's.)
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