Well, they’ve done it again. Federated Department Stores has announced yet another round of name-changes for its regional department stores. Now, they’re no longer going to have regional identities as far as signage, bags, et cetera are concerned. They’re all going to be Macy’s or Bloomingdale’s, mostly the former. This comes on the heels of an awkward period in which the various chains shared their banner with Macy’s, creating such goofy monikers as Rich’s-Macy’s, Bon-Macy’s and Goldsmith’s-Macy’s, among others.
Don’t get me wrong. Macy’s is not a bad name, and virtually everyone who shops knows it. But the hyphenated names were a joke from the start. The old regionals were fast becoming more and more like each other. If I took an average person into Rich’s, for example, blindfolded them, teleported them to Macy’s and removed the blindfold, they would be hard-pressed to tell they were in a different store.
This whole name-changing thing reeks of goofiness. In cases where there were already Macy’s stores in a market with the former regionals, Macy’s did some high-profile exits, particularly in Atlanta, which lost Macy’s in several malls and downtown. And FDS assured customers of Rich’s, Lazarus and Burdines that things would only get better. Now, they announce that they plan to officially finish the job in converting its store base into a national chain when they’ve already done it through centralized buying and divisional consolidations, things that made operating costs cheaper, but did nothing for Joe and Jane Consumer.
They really could have saved themselves some sign and stationery money and done this in the first place.
The Birmingham Galleria lost Macy's last year, but rumor has it that a Proffitt's will take its place. I don't know much about the store, but I think it's in the same family as Parisian and Saks. By the way, you may already know this as you are quite the retail buff, but Birmingham is or has been the headquarters for quite a few big-name stores: Parisian, Saks, Just for Feet, Proffitts, and Hibbett Sports... just to name a few.
ReplyDeleteProffitt's is coming to the Galleria, and supposedly it's a new, unique version of the store because of all the space Macy's left (nearly 300,000 square feet), but Proffitt's is usually identical to McRae's and very similar to Belk, Dillard's, Rich's, et a1. We'll see when it opens.
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