Macy’s yesterday announced it was closing a whole bunch of stores across the country. Sears is rumored to be on the edge of total collapse. Management at both companies is blaming the internet for their travails.
I spent some time in Macy’s and Sears over the holiday shopping season. I don’t think their problem is competition with online retailers. I think a lot of it is their merchandise just isn’t appealing. (In addition to Christmas shopping, I’m renovating a 5,000 SF church, so I need all kinds of stuff.) Their retail model is dated, especially Sears which just seems to pile up stuff haphazardly throughout their stores. It’s just not fun shopping in a store where it looks like no one gives a crap. It probably didn’t help Macy’s that they dropped their Donald Trump line of menswear (because the management assumed since they hated Trump, everybody else did too), or that Sears outsourced production of Craftsman tools to China.
I’m not an expert in “Retail Science,” but if I were in charge of either chain, my strategy would be to fall back and regroup. Forget about being a national retailer for a while and become a strong regional retailer. Hire local people as buyers and tailor inventory to regional tastes. I would also invest in the ‘shopping experience.’ One of the reason chains like Wegmans, Publix, and Nordstrom seem to weather the change is that they make coming into their stores a pleasing experience.
I’m an outlier, but I don’t think the internet spells doom for all brick-and-mortar retailers. But the companies that run them need to recognize that shopping habits have changed. Shopping at a store in the mall is no longer a necessity, so you better give people a reason to come out and recognize that shopping patterns have changed. If I am shopping for bed linens, I want to be able to touch and feel them. I also want a pretty big selection to choose from. OTOH, if I am shopping for power tools, then I’m going to go online, read reviews, and go for the best value. There are also things I just want right away, and don’t want to wait for delivery of. e.g. If I’m painting a room, I’m going to buy brushes and tape locally. That kind of stuff.
So, clean up your damn stores, have better merchandise, and teach your employees to be nice but not pushy, and you’ll get through this.
Growing up in a suburb, my family loved the Kenmore and Craftsman products we bought at Sears. Back then, these names were synonymous with good quality, were made in the US, and were readily available in stores stocked with knowledgeable employees. Management no longer controls US retail — shareholders do. Shareholders want quarterly profits and so retail doesn’t look beyond the next few months. In order to satisfy this narrow, short-term thinking, Craftsman and Kenmore items are made in China for the cheapest cost possible and stores have few employees and they are paid low wages. Integration with online retail has been slow and sporadic (try ordering something online for local pickup — nightmare). Sears needs to drop their apparel sales altogether — way too much competition in that sector and their house brand stuff is terrible. Devote store space to appliances, auto, tools, home dec and furniture, and get into new sectors such as funeral services, landscaping, etc. Get back into home building like they did around the turn of the last century such as house plans and even kit houses where parts would be delivered to a building site and a licensed contractor would put them together.
Hmmm…maybe Macy’s shouldn’t have fired Trump in 2015 for exercising his First Amendment rights over immigration policy?
*Drops mic*
Regards,
Peter H.
Perhaps Macy’s & Sears’ problem is they listen to a few people who demand to have stock piled sky high. BedBath&Beyond doesn’t seem to have a customer problem & you can touch stuff. It’s the department store model that is outdated. Hasn’t been popular since the 80’s. Nordstrom’s just has good stuff, but expensive, people want to go see it. But when I’m looking for a pressure cooker or something else random I like to be able to know where to go. Regions around the country are fairly uniform now. There’s a Lowe’s, Home Depot, Walmart & BedBath. Like Macy’s/Sears disentangled & got better stuff. In greater quantity.
Taste change, and so do customer wants. However, these retail has beens have become ‘cost centers’ with employees who are paid the least, in actual terms trained to merely push selling – with no real knowledge, and the customer is seen merely as a wallet to be emptied.
Also – trade made names mean nothing today. I have Craftsman items from the time these were Made IN America. They last. Today’s Craftsman is trash. And frankly, until these chains return to those practices that actually made them – they will continue to die. But, maybe – I am merely ‘Old school’ for today wiz kids.
“if I were in charge of either chain, my strategy would be to fall back and regroup. Forget about being a national retailer for a while and become a strong regional retailer.” [V the K]
IMO not doing this is precisely one of the elements that led to department stores’ downfall. There used to be regional differences: Macy’s, Daytons, Marshall Field, Kaufman, all of these regional department stores had unique characters imbued by the merchandise brought in by their distinctive buyers. Now, holding companies such as Federated Stores, have decided to save pennies by dropping everything under one name and probably centralizing buying. When I was younger it was fun to go into a Dayton’s or a Marshall Field’s or a Kaufmann’s on a business trip to see what I could find that was different. Now Macy’s in Chicago in no different than Macy’s in Pittsburgh, etc., plus, I resent the loss of the regional names. I refuse to shop in Macy’s in Pittsburgh; I have taken my business elsewhere—online.
When I was a kid in the 1960s, we had lots of “stuff” from Sears, but by the 1990s it was “who shops at Sears anymore?”. I haven’t shopped Sears in decades…and I stopped going to Macy’s 10-years ago when the quality and selections started to obviously-slide. I haven’t even been inside a mall in 5-years at-least.
Remember when “going to the Mall” meant a way to kill time with friends, catch a movie and people-watch?? Cute guys!!, tight pants, the food court…Orange Julius, Chick-fil-a and Annie’s Pretzels.
Ah Marshall Field’s…people in Chicago were a tad upset when Macy’s bought them and turned them all into Macy’s. By changing the name they eliminated any reason at all to shop there. Who wants to shop in a New York store?
I walked into Sears a few years on Black Friday (maybe 10am, not during the crazy rush) looking for a dishwasher. There were 8-10 sales associates just standing there in the appliance section. Not one looked over to us, said hi, or anything. One actually left for lunch. From that point, I became #NeverSears.
And Rigid surpassed Craftsman in quality long ago.
Brick and mortar will continue to have a tough time. VtK mentions the “shopping experience” which people want but are not willing to pay for.
My hubby dabbles in model-railroading (mainly the building part) and the number of mom-n-pop hobby stores is falling because people like to go look and, when they see something new they like, they run home and order it online. I’ve actually seen people in bookstores look at a book, get their iPhone out, and order it (for less) on Amazon.
I remember when there were adults that made an actual living selling stuff in department stores… bet those people are near-extinct.
I work at Macy’s. I predict within 15 years there will only be a handful of stores open. They have many problems. There is too much stuff there that doesn’t sell. A very liberal exchange policy. It’s a shoplifter’s paradise. Too many employees that are clueless. Too many managers who are clueless. Clunky online ordering system. Old, falling-apart fixtures. Customers leaving behind a trail of wreckage as they shop results in many items being “damaged out.” I could go on and on. My store is not closing at this time.
I buy most clothes at the store and less on line. I prefer trying things on, especially pants and shoes. Yes, I could get something on line, but if it doesn’t fit, I have to send it back, ask for another size, and wait for it. That could be at least a week, whereas I can acquire it at a store pronto. However, I do get occasional shirts, underwear on line.
Stanley Black & Decker, upon their announcement of the acquisition of the Craftsman line and trademark, noted that they planned to establish an additional manufacturing facility in the US, hiring a yet-to-be-announced number of workers.
‘Kenmore’ has never been anything more than a vanity name for products made by other manufacturers. Part of what made it so good in the past was the easy acquisition of the product for much of middle-class America [read: easy credit terms], proprietary models their contract manufacturer/s made exclusively for Sears, and a nationwide repair network as close as your local Sears store. The vast majority of Kenmore-branded products (think big appliances such as washing machines, dishwashers, and refrigerators) have been made for decades by Whirlpool. Most Whirlpool products—including those by their acquired companies Maytag and KitchenAid—are made in the USA and also have been for decades. While a lot of foreign-produced products are crap, it’s also helpful to remember that not everything made in the USA is stellar; there’s also plenty of locally-produced crap made at home, too.
From the post:
I noticed this also during the holiday season, which was the first time I sat foot in my local Sears store in probably a year. It doesn’t help that Sears—locally, a mall anchor store—pressured the mall management to allow them to set their own retail hours, which now means that the store closes 1-2 hours before the rest of the mall. Not conducive to shoppers like myself who are loathe to endure crowds and like to go at off-peak times—which are usually within an hour or so of closing.
Part of the success of Wal-Mart Stores Inc is their policy of allowing their store managers at the nameplate stores and Sam’s Club the wide latitude of stocking regionally-produced products and making buying decisions for their local store. It’s one reason why the people in my neck of the woods often go to both Walmart Supercenters in order to make a complete shopping trip, since each store does not carry identical items.
The downside to this is that local managers can create liability for the company by carrying items that may not make it through the national procurement process. The Wall Street Journal once had a story about the large number of Wal-Mart properties that sold counterfeit merchandise because said merchandise was sourced by local managers. It got so bad that at one time Tommy Hillfiger (the company, not necessarily the designer) refused to sell any product to Wal-Mart divisions so their name wouldn’t be sullied by commingling with illegitimate product. Other vendors also sued the company because of the counterfeit stuff.
Somewhat true, but Wegmans and Publix are grocery retailers, which are not as dependent on the shopping experience for traffic for mainstream shoppers. Grocery traffic patterns are largely dependent on proximity to the shopper. Be in a good location, keep the shelves stocked, offer a few sales, and you can charge a higher price for milk or other items than the competition. (I’m one of the few people I know who actually shops at all the regional grocery retailers and shops the weekly ad slicks.) Walmart has capitalized on this by making their stores truly one-stop locales and thus can also get away with being higher on certain items than other stores, which is the “convenience surcharge”.
The exception to this are the Whole Foods shoppers, who delude themselves by saying they go for the ‘fresh’ organic kale and arugula, but are actually going for The Shopping Experience. Companies like Wegmans are somewhat unique, but mostly because of their now-quirky management and retailing style, which has earned them a loyal customer base. But as a family-owned and regional company, this is hard to replicate on a large-scale basis.
This is exactly why Internet retailing will never replace brick-and-mortar stores and why saying that poor fortunes for the B&M stores is due to online shopping is a lazy copout. I heard a retail analyst in a business news story remark years ago that “Americans are feelers” and that we, as a purchasing society, like to touch the merchandise. I never thought about it until he said it, but he is right. It’s partly why I find online clothes shopping so exasperating. You can offer high-definition pictures that allow you to zoom into the photo to see the weave of the fabric and throw pictures of a cute model wearing the item, but it still doesn’t tell the prospective purchaser how it feels, not to mention how it will look on their person.
This is called “showrooming” and it’s becoming a major issue in retail. I refuse to call it a “problem”, since I was showrooming years ago, long before online retailing was a thing, simply by perusing photography magazines and the like for discount prices on electronics by the (usually) New York City retailers who could undercut everyone else. If you offer unique products at fair prices, people will buy those products locally. Offering product selection at list prices (as most B&M bookstores do with most books) and expecting people to buy them because of instant gratification is insane in the 21st Century.
Pretty much extinct. Case in point: about twenty years ago, I needed a tie and pants for a funeral. I went to my local JCPenney store (where my family shopped for decades) and one of the most helpful not-quite-middle-aged sales clerks spent a fair amount of time helping me with a selection. A couple of years later, I was stunned to see that same sales clerk now working at Walmart. Walmart! I chatted with her a bit and she informed me that JCPenney paid the least of any store in the local mall and had made commissions practically impossible to obtain (and therefore unable to support a worker on that job alone). It was around that time that I noticed that most of the clerks in that JCPenney were teenagers or thereabouts, as they are today. I see very few employees, even management, over 30.
I never saw that particular sales clerk again and always wondered what happened to her. Fast forward to this last holiday season and I was in the local Home Depot and I saw a particular employee, stared at her for a moment, and realized it was the very same onetime JCP sales clerk. I was glad to see there was someone with experience still working in retail.
the smell of a sears store is distinct and depressing. I think the smell comes from the clothes. It’s hard to describe a smell, but if it had a color it would be light gray.