Macy’s 2020

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

Post by architect »

Over the past couple of months, has anyone noticed certain locations (particularly neighborhood stores) growing increasingly sparse on product? During this time frame, I have visited 7-8 Macy's stores around Texas, with widely-differing experiences at each. At some, it appears to be business as usual, while at others, it feels like a quiet liquidation sale (very reminiscent of many Sears stores in their closing days). My worst experiences are as follows:

Irving Mall, Irving - Not a surprise here. This store has been on both the neighborhood stores list and closing watch for some time, but it has gotten noticeably worse during COVID. Product in both the men's and home departments was extremely sparse upon my last visit a few weeks ago (particularly in designer brands such as Polo Ralph Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Nike, etc.). Generally upkeep was also terrible, with generally disgusting floors and a creaky escalator which could be heard through a substantial portion of the store. Shopper traffic was also terrible.

Music City Mall, Lewisville - Another non-surprise, though this store has slipped far since my previous visit. The maintenance of the store is far better than Irving (primarily due to its newer age and design), but as a couple of weeks ago, there were also significant gaps in product selection and availability. Throughout many departments, signs such as the following were posted to direct shoppers to macys.com for a wider selection. Again, many of the low/no stock items centered around designer brands. Prior to COVID, this was also a neighborhood store which was designated for closure over the next three years, so my guess is that restocking is minimal to prepare for an eventual closure after Christmas.

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Hulen Mall, Fort Worth - This one was the most surprising of the bunch, and the impetus for this post. I visited this store today in hopes of taking care of some Christmas shopping, but left almost empty handed due to a lack of available product which was of interest. Inventory was noticeably thin (especially on the men's side, where like the aforementioned locations, most designer sections were only 30-50% stocked). Housewares was also noticeably sparse, though in that case, the remaining product was spread out to make the shelves seem better stocked. Shopper traffic was decent, but not what you would expect for the weekend prior to Christmas. However, both the mall and the Dillard's co-anchor were absolutely packed, so this problem was more specific to Macy's. The one bright spot was the Backstage department, which was much better stocked (but almost too much as to begin to look cluttered). This store has not previously appeared on any neighborhood stores or still closing lists, but I wonder if this one could be one the chopping block for 2021? The physical store is quite antiquated and desperately needs some work, and while Hulen Mall is still decently successful, it is noting like what it was in its heyday. The one thing this location has going for it is its lack of proximity to other stores, as the next-closest locations for the western/southern portion of Fort Worth are the Parks at Arlington and North East Mall, both a decent drive away. However, with a Market by Macy's location opening in the city during the first quarter of next year, maybe this new store is designed to ultimately replace Hulen? Regardless, it will be interesting to see how this plays out.

In the runner up category would be Shops at Willow Bend in Plano. This store has a far better selection than the other locations previously mentioned, but still had some corners of the store which were considerably understocked, and the store is being noticeably understaffed at this time with limited registers open.

On the other hand, stores at Northpark Center (Dallas), Houston Galleria, Willowbrook Mall (Houston), and Deerbrook Mall (Houston) were all well-stocked, indicating that these inventory issues are not a chain-wide issue.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

What you are seeing with these understocked stores is what Macy's calls a "Neighborhood Store." You may have also noticed more centralized cashwraps (vs. checkouts in multiple places within the departments).

These are stores that are being considered for closure. They make significant cuts to labor (including management and loss prevention) and inventory in these "Neighborhood Stores." If a store's performance improves or circumstances change, they may "un-neighborhood it" and bring it back to being a standard store. They have done few Backstage departments in those (ironic since the department may make sense in some of those locations), but the one thing they have done in most (all?) of them is to build a counter with a customer service department for online order pick up and other services (returns, etc.) into them.

Macy's home departments seem to be rather understocked even at their best stores. It is quite a fall from how those departments looked 5 years ago.

I was in the Reno Macy's last night and it had some traffic, and was generally neat and orderly. The store is really well stocked and well merchandised. It feels the most festive and alive of just about any retail store I've been to this year (this has been a bad year... in a normal year this store's appearance would not stand out like this). Lightly staffed, but it was late.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by MSSportsGuy »

The Macy's in Collierville, TN, just outside Memphis, is a large store that has been built in the last 20 years. I don't think I've ever seen it very busy and a visit last Christmas (pre Covid times) made me wonder if it will survive. It's on the "neighborhood store" list and carries very little inventory despite having a huge space to show it. Their men's selection leaves much to be desired.

I've been to a few Macy's that were nice once upon a time but now they all seem to be just run of the mill mall stores that are the same generic merchandise as one can find anywhere.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by Jeff »

I was at the Lakewood, CA Macys store today. Several years ago it was downsized with the basement level being closed off to the public. Today, the lower level is now open once more with about 1/3 of it being the Backstage. It makes it look like a bargain basement and I actually like it. They had the doors open into the rest of the level and they are now using it as an auditorium with chairs, tables, screens. They were actually doing something that looked like a class in there.

Toys R Us opened on the 2nd level of the store, and the 3rd level looked well with home and furniture. I was pleasantly suprised that this 4 level former May Co looked well stocked and decently clean.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by ClownLoach »

Mission Viejo men's store still looks like they're having a sale on empty floor space, but this is clearly in preparation for the consolidation of the two stores. Although Macy's has not commented publicly there have been many City Council meetings where their representatives are negotiating about how many apartments and condos can replace the current women's store, which is the larger of the two buildings (but it is a dingy, dark cave inside). This will make accessing the mall a traffic nightmare. They're going to have to find a way to funnel residential traffic in via separate driveways further from I-5, the problem is that Mission Hospital is in the way. I would imagine that they will not close the women's store and consolidate until after the Christmas season. These stores were not on the "neighborhood" stores list I saw a while ago, but they're being forced to consolidate because of the pressure from the state of California, where Amazon backed politicians are basically mandating the removal of all retail commercial property to replace with housing in fully developed cities.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by Jeff »

ClownLoach wrote: August 18th, 2022, 11:59 am Mission Viejo men's store still looks like they're having a sale on empty floor space, but this is clearly in preparation for the consolidation of the two stores. Although Macy's has not commented publicly there have been many City Council meetings where their representatives are negotiating about how many apartments and condos can replace the current women's store, which is the larger of the two buildings (but it is a dingy, dark cave inside). This will make accessing the mall a traffic nightmare. They're going to have to find a way to funnel residential traffic in via separate driveways further from I-5, the problem is that Mission Hospital is in the way. I would imagine that they will not close the women's store and consolidate until after the Christmas season. These stores were not on the "neighborhood" stores list I saw a while ago, but they're being forced to consolidate because of the pressure from the state of California, where Amazon backed politicians are basically mandating the removal of all retail commercial property to replace with housing in fully developed cities.
I cant recall, are both stores 3 levels or just the former Bullocks / current Macys Mens. Consolidating these two stores would make sense.That womens store is a dark cave and has a lot of closed off spaces.

A good idea would move home or furniture into the former H&M space and have mens on 1, women on 2 and 3 in the Macys mens store.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

Did an online pick up order with Macys. Value of order was under $50. Arrived at store and wanted to go in and look at the store so I figured I'd do the pick up inside.

Went to pick up area. After the two customers who were using the pick up area as a checkout counter (since there doesn't seem to be any staffing in the store) were successfully being hassled into signing up for a credit card (one who kept making excuses like "I won't get approved" then "I don't have my ID" then some other excuses but they eventually just let her apply anyway maybe she found her ID who knows) both of whom got the "we will contact you by mail" slip from the system, I was finally assisted.

I stated my name and had my ID out. The employee said "I need your barcode."
I asked Barcode? What barcode?
The employee said "Do you have your pick up e-mail?"
I said "well I can get that but it'll take a bit of time, can you look up my order by my ID?"
The employee said "no, I need the barcode"
....okay.... so I then wasted a couple minutes getting onto their wi-fi and logging into e-mail since the store has no signal, and getting that pulled up
The employee scanned the barcode and a paper slip printed out of the register.
The employee then said "take this slip to the department and they will have your order there"
I asked if it would be staffed, the employee said, "it should be, if it isn't you can come back here and we will page someone"
.............okay, I walked over to the department. It was staffed.
I presented the slip to the employee and said I was there for pick up.
The employee got in a cubby under the counter and found my package and said okay, I have it here. The employee then took out a clip board with various pages attached and had to manually write the date, time, order number, and have me sign this piece of paper for the pick up.
Then the employee said "I just need to check this out on the register, do you have your barcode?"
I said "isn't the barcode on the slip I handed you?"
The employee said "no, that is the order number, it isn't the same as the barcode"
...............................................okay..... back to wi-fi, back to e-mail, to get this barcode AGAIN
The employee then scanned the barcode on the register. The employee then said "what is your DL number?"
I said "what?"
The employee said "your Driver's License number, the system wants your Driver's License number"
I said okay and told her the number to key into the machine. She then asked what state it was from and input that. The employee didn't care to see my DL since I knew the DL number. Then she said I was all done and ready to leave.

What a horrible process.

I wonder how this works with curbside.

Quite a contrast to Kohl's where the orders sit out in the open and there is zero control over the orders. Kohl's is going to have massive fraud and order theft with their set up.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by veteran+ »

Ahhhhhhh, the wonderful world of "tech" and how "convenient" it is and how much time it saves.

Easy peasy, for sure!

🤪🤪🤪🤣🤣🤣
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by storewanderer »

veteran+ wrote: November 23rd, 2022, 10:50 am Ahhhhhhh, the wonderful world of "tech" and how "convenient" it is and how much time it saves.

Easy peasy, for sure!

🤪🤪🤪🤣🤣🤣
I take pride in knowing Macy's spent a lot more labor fulfilling my order this way than if I would have gone to the store, found the item myself, and had them spend 30 seconds of Macy's employee labor to take care of me at the Macy's cash register paying for the item.

I will not be doing any further shopping at Macy's this holiday season as a result of this experience.
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Re: Macy’s 2020

Post by bryceleinan »

storewanderer wrote: November 22nd, 2022, 10:49 pm Did an online pick up order with Macys. Value of order was under $50. Arrived at store and wanted to go in and look at the store so I figured I'd do the pick up inside.

Went to pick up area. After the two customers who were using the pick up area as a checkout counter (since there doesn't seem to be any staffing in the store) were successfully being hassled into signing up for a credit card (one who kept making excuses like "I won't get approved" then "I don't have my ID" then some other excuses but they eventually just let her apply anyway maybe she found her ID who knows) both of whom got the "we will contact you by mail" slip from the system, I was finally assisted.

I stated my name and had my ID out. The employee said "I need your barcode."
I asked Barcode? What barcode?
The employee said "Do you have your pick up e-mail?"
I said "well I can get that but it'll take a bit of time, can you look up my order by my ID?"
The employee said "no, I need the barcode"
....okay.... so I then wasted a couple minutes getting onto their wi-fi and logging into e-mail since the store has no signal, and getting that pulled up
The employee scanned the barcode and a paper slip printed out of the register.
The employee then said "take this slip to the department and they will have your order there"
I asked if it would be staffed, the employee said, "it should be, if it isn't you can come back here and we will page someone"
.............okay, I walked over to the department. It was staffed.
I presented the slip to the employee and said I was there for pick up.
The employee got in a cubby under the counter and found my package and said okay, I have it here. The employee then took out a clip board with various pages attached and had to manually write the date, time, order number, and have me sign this piece of paper for the pick up.
Then the employee said "I just need to check this out on the register, do you have your barcode?"
I said "isn't the barcode on the slip I handed you?"
The employee said "no, that is the order number, it isn't the same as the barcode"
...............................................okay..... back to wi-fi, back to e-mail, to get this barcode AGAIN
The employee then scanned the barcode on the register. The employee then said "what is your DL number?"
I said "what?"
The employee said "your Driver's License number, the system wants your Driver's License number"
I said okay and told her the number to key into the machine. She then asked what state it was from and input that. The employee didn't care to see my DL since I knew the DL number. Then she said I was all done and ready to leave.

What a horrible process.

I wonder how this works with curbside.

Quite a contrast to Kohl's where the orders sit out in the open and there is zero control over the orders. Kohl's is going to have massive fraud and order theft with their set up.
My head hurts just reading this... it reminds me of the Service Merchandise days. Not even Summit Racing/DX Engineering is that bad, and their system is pretty awful at that.
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