Holidays on Display

The main aisle of Marshall Field & Co., Chicago, circa 1955. (National Museum of American History, Smithsonian Institution)

Holidays on Display examines the art, industry, and history of holiday display across the United States. Focusing on parading culture and department store retail display, primarily between the 1920s and 1960s, when holiday displays were considered commercial endeavors equally rewarding for the American public, the exhibition showcases numerous photographs, postcards and rendering illustration of parade floats and window displays—including the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade and Marshall Field & Company Christmas windows—as well as objects relating to the early creation of these displays.

“Holidays on Display” will be on view at the National Museum of American History through November 2010

Link to Smithsonian Institution
Online Exhibition
Press Realease
Asked and Answered | Holidays on Display

Playing to the Middle

By CINTRA WILSON

Published: August 13, 2009

J.C. Penney has broken free of its suburban parking area to invade Herald Square, and the most frequent question on New York’s collective lips seems to be: Why? (read more)

The new JCPenney at the Manhattan Mall in New York (former home to Gimbels, Stern's and A&S) is open and flourishing in an otherwise dismal retail market. What better way to celebrate its arrival and success by sending the New York Times fashion reporter Cintra Wilson into the store for a review. Ms. Wilson gives the store enough backhanded compliments and outright insults that's almost a parody of a serious article, even for the Fashion & Style section.

Consider this excerpt:

J. C. Penney has always trafficked in knockoffs that aren’t quite up to Canal Street’s illegal standards. It was never “get the look for less” so much as “get something vaguely shaped like the designer thing you want, but cut much more conservatively, made in all-petroleum materials, and with a too-similar wannabe logo that announces your inferiority to evil classmates as surely as if you were cursed to be followed around by a tuba section.”

Just like all good clichés, this hackneyed statement is partly based in truth, but not so much that no one would be able say it definitively. Penney’s is no runway show, but its offerings are no worse than those of Target, Kohl's or even most of the private label merchandise at Macy's.

Considering the questionable (and largely overpriced even at a discount) merchandise that passes for fashion in the dozens of off-price store that cover Manhattan, JCPenney seems like a measure of clarity. At least what you want is likely in your size.

You also have to consider that every other large scale retailer that has been in this mall since the fall of Gimbels has tanked. Stern's, for all of its history as the "Show Biz Store," looked more like a bad infomercial when they were there. Steve & Barry's was even worse, stretching its bland wares into an oversized space that was doomed to fail. Don't get me started on the perpetually lackluster specialty stores in this mall. JCPenney is a strong enough name that it could be a serious contender with the right amount of traffic.

UPDATE: Apparently neither the public or Ms. Wilson's bosses liked the article very much.
The Insult Was Extra Large
NYTimes Issues Apology For Cintra Wilson Article

Macy's to invigorate flagship store

Launches ad campaign, "Take Me to State Street"

Sandra M. Jones
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO - Macy's Inc. is unveiling a brand campaign aimed at breathing new life into its downtown State Street flagship store, which has alienated some shoppers since converting from Marshall Field's last year [more]

way to shop?

Macy's regional buying strategy is criticized

By SUZANNE KAPNERF
The New York Post

Even as Macy's spends millions of dollars to create a national brand through advertising and store renovations, behind the scenes the company still operates through seven regional buying offices, a system that analysts have panned as outdated and costly.

Macy's argues that its regional divisions allow it to better tailor merchandise for different stores, ensuring that marquee locations such as Macy's Herald Square carry more upscale items than do stores in less affluent neighborhoods.

But analysts point out that Macy's is one of the few large retailers to still rely on regional buying offices. J.C. Penney, Kohl's and Nordstrom are among those that have switched to central systems, yet manage to pepper stores with local flavor, these people said.

As Macy's sales continue to lag expectations, the company's cost structure is increasingly becoming a topic of conversation. This is especially true as savings from its merger with the May Department Stores Co. start to run their course.

"Macy's cost structure is too high, and, as a result, their prices are too high," said Robert Buchanan of A. G. Edwards. "That is a key reason why they are likely to lose market share."

Buchanan estimates that Macy's could save $100 million a year by eliminating all but two of its buying offices. He favors the retention of regional merchandise managers to ensure that products are tailored to individual stores.

Such a move would help bring Macy's expenses in line with competitors. According to Buchanan, Macy's expense-to- sales ratio is 32 percent compared with 27 percent for Nordstrom and 25 percent for both J.C. Penney and Kohl's.

Macy's has tried centralized buying in its home department with disastrous results, making it less likely the company would move quickly to streamline other divisions, observers said.

The move to central buying for bedding, furniture and other items for the home pre-dated Macy's, then known as Federated Department Stores, 2005 merger with the May Co.

Logistical problems with warehouse and distribution centers overwhelmed the Macy's team. Then the housing slump kicked in, further hurting sales of home goods, which have been among the company's weakest performers.

The pressure to cut costs by centralizing operations comes as Macy's finds it increasingly difficult to integrate the roughly 400 stores it acquired from the May Co.

Macy's is adding more promotions and adjusting merchandise through a seven-box grid. Prices range from good, better, best. Styles are lumped into four groups with traditional being the most conservative and fashion the most trendy.

Tinkering with the merchandise only works if consumers perceive products sold at Macy's to be of comparable or better value to what competitors are offering, analysts said.

For instance, towels sold at Macy's under its private label Charter Club brand for $16 stack up poorly against Target's Fieldcrest towels, which regularly go for $11.99, said Robert Passikoff of Brand Keys.

The NYC Profit Calculator (Macy's edition)

If you have ever wondered how a place like Macy's in Herald Square stays in business, here's an idea.

Related Story
The Profit Calculator -- New York Magazine

Federated Plans to Change Name to Macy's

MSN Money & Business Wire reports

The management of Federated Department Stores wants to change the company's name. The retailer said a vote on changing its name to Macy's Group will occur at the company's annual meeting May 18. If approved, the name change will go into effect June 1.

"We're no longer a federation of retail stores; Macy's is 90% of our business," CEO Terry Lundgren told CNBC today.

Federated Department Stores, Inc. was originally chosen as the company's name in 1929 by a group of family-owned department stores that joined together under a corporate holding company umbrella.

Federated became an operating company in 1945, and its portfolio over the years has included various regional department store names.

In 2005 and 2006, all regional nameplates were converted to Macy's. The company today operates only Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores, with both brands expanding nationwide.

way to flop

It’s not working.

The enhanced synergies of the Federated-May merger, much documented on this blog, are turning out to be hyperbole, at least in my neck of the woods. A recent visit to several local converted Macy’s stores confirms this.

Status Quo at Valley View
The Roanoke Macy’s seems to be one of the few former Hecht’s that has maintained its previous market position. This was a very typical Hecht’s previously, having been expanded and remodeled only a few years ago and carrying a very standard line of department store merchandise, sans furniture and rugs. Except for some small tweaks, Federated changed little about this store except its signs.

The inclusion of Federated private labels has enhanced the merchandise mix at Macy’s Valley View, though ladies’ apparel is still a little on the dull side, and the Home Store has lost some of its merchandise breadth and depth without seeming like a smaller selection. You have to give them credit for maintaining a semblance of normalcy, though it’s nowhere near as special a shopping experience as the national ads would have you believe.

River Ridge rows away
The Lynchburg location Macy’s currently occupies at River Ridge Mall must have been a ‘cash cow’ for its various owners over the years, because it’s bound to have made far more money than was invested back into it.

This store is a time warp in every sense of the word. Opened by Thalhimers in 1980 when it was still part of Carter Hawley Hale, the store received minor updates when it was purchased by May Company and turned into Hecht’s, but little else in its nearly thirty year existence. In turn, the merchandise has maintained the same general price point over the years by continually trading down its merchandise mix until the formerly upscale store is now a shell of its former self.

With its only bright spot being its involuntary position as a shrine to early ‘80s department store design, the store fails to impress. Macy’s switched out May Company private labels for Federated ones and thinned out an already paltry selection of clothes and home items.

Even with a national brand name and upmarket aspirations, it plays second fiddle to the Belk store a few hundred feet away.

Still Friendly, but not focused
Macy’s Friendly Center in Greensboro has become a retail enigma. The formerly swanky Thalhimers was heavily renovated and expanded into a fairly fashionable (for May Company) Hecht’s in the late ‘90s, only to stop its evolution somewhere around 2001.

Even with a major push to prominently feature Federated private labels like Charter Cub and Alfani ‘shops’ at prominent spots in the main floor misses department with the Macy’s conversion, this store has evolved from kitchen clean and standardized to a dated hodgepodge of fixture and merchandise styles, none of which mesh well together.

The department that bared the brunt of conversion pains is Misses Sportswear. Formerly a reliable source of classic suits and separates, the department’s push to attract younger customers have left its signature lines looking chintzy and Traditional Sportswear looking more matronly than ever.

Marked contrasts exist. A small but somewhat showy millinery section sits next to a comparatively dowdy suit and dress department. Pricey men’s cashmere sportcoats sit near an uninspiring selection of mid-market Bostonian shoes. An upmarket china selection is positioned near a rack of ‘As Seen on TV’ merchandise. To be sure, Hecht’s had similar contrasts at times, but never as pronounced or badly maintained.

Even the handful of high-end brands that sell well at the store can’t disguise the poor housekeeping and muddled vision this pace now has. Multiple burned out light bulbs in the ceiling and merchandise scattered in all the wrong places are things that Macy’s Friendly Center has that Hecht’s Friendly Center hardly ever did.

De-evolution on Wendover
How do you update an innovative department store? Apparently by removing all innovation.

Greensboro’s Hecht’s Wendover opened as a May Company test store for lifestyle merchandising, eschewing many of the traditional rules about merchandising and display in order to make the store more appealing to modern, time-starved shoppers. While not everything they tried was a success, the test results were strong enough that traditional Hecht’s stores started sporting some of the new techniques: brighter lighting, hipper brands, bigger signs, and more self-serve merchandise fixtures.

Macy’s Wendover represents the shunning of just about all that Hecht’s learned in favor of the tried and true, and decidedly boring. The Federated private labels add little to the mix. New merchandise adjacencies replaced a well-done Juniors’/ Young Men’s department with a Juniors’ department sitting next to matronly sportswear. Time saving ‘express’ checkouts near entrances were supplanted with barely-staffed traditional cash-wraps. Displays went from dramatic to anticlimactic. The total effect is antique merchandising set against a whiz-bang backdrop.

Your mileage may vary, but it’s becoming apparent, at least in this area, that things aren’t as great as they should be at Macy’s.

Gap Is in Need of a Niche

By MICHAEL BARBARO and HILLARY CHURA

In the fall of 2004, Gap put on a splashy ad campaign called, “How do you wear it?” with Lenny Kravtiz and Sarah Jessica Parker. It featured the pair dancing in customized Gap jeans — his with metal studs down the seam; hers with a waist-to-cuff velvet ribbon.

It was just the kind of envelope-pushing fashion Gap needed to compete with popular new designer-inspired denim brands like Diesel, Rock & Republic and Seven for All Mankind.

But there was a catch: the bedazzled jeans, which Gap called a “celebration of personal style,” could not be found at its stores.

Consumers had to buy a pair of basic, unembellished jeans at the store and customize them at a special training sessions held at some Gaps, or take a trip to Home Depot and Jo-Ann Fabrics and figure it out themselves.

The marketing tease is a small case study in what has ailed Gap, which ousted its chief executive, Paul S. Pressler, this week after years of dismal performance at its Gap and Old Navy divisions.

At a time when small, narrowly focused fashion brands — Coach, Juicy Couture, Tahari, Laundry — have become ascendant in American retailing, Gap has served up a steady diet of simple, unobjectionable casual clothing designed to appeal to everyone.

How do they wear it, as the ads asked? Increasingly, they just do not.

In an era of niches, when exclusion is as vital as inclusion, Gap has become an anachronism: a single chain, selling only its own brand, with one point of view, chasing shoppers from birth to death.

“If you stand for everything in fashion today, you stand for nothing,” said Paul R. Charron, the former chief executive of Liz Claiborne, who is credited with revitalizing the clothing company by purchasing fast-growing brands like Juicy Couture and Lucky Brand.

“Brands like the Gap, brands broadly available,” Mr. Charron said, “have a special challenge to be relevant in a period when focus and exclusivity are so important.”

Indeed, consumers are abandoning the chain in staggering numbers. Sales at stores open at least a year, a standard measure of a retailer’s health, have fallen or remained stagnant for 28 of the last 30 months.

And the declines have not been small. Sales fell 8 percent in December and November and 7 percent in October — the most crucial months of the year. The word “disappointing” became a common refrain in every monthly news release explaining Gap’s performance.

Gap operates three divisions: Gap, Old Navy and Banana Republic. All three have struggled, but only Banana Republic is on the rebound.

Niche brands, by contrast, have done so well that they have even reversed the fortunes of the American department store. In the last year, the performance of department stores like Nordstrom and Macy’s has quietly overtaken that of specialty clothing retailers like Gap.

The reason? “Consumers want brands, and we are all about brands,” said Stephen I. Sadove, chief executive of Saks Inc., whose sales have improved sharply in the last year on the strength of designer labels like Tahari and Theory.

“It’s very hard for the specialty clothing stores to keep themselves cutting-edge and fresh,” Mr. Sadove said. “There is a lot of sameness.”

Or walk into the handful of specialty clothing chains like Abercrombie & Fitch, American Apparel and Anthropologie, stores that, like Gap, design their own clothing but have managed to thrive by appealing to small slivers of the public.

Those stores’ environments leave no doubt who their shopper is supposed to be — vintage-loving, 30-something urban women (at Anthropologie); trend-obsessed, preppy teenagers (at Abercrombie & Fitch); and socially conscious hipsters in their 20s and 30s (at American Apparel.)

Abercrombie & Fitch is openly hostile to what it considers the wrong customer — typically anyone over 30 — warding them off with booming music, dark shades on the front windows and teenage employees standing out front.

Gap has veered to the other extreme, putting out a welcome mat to nearly everyone, with well-lighted, sparsely decorated stores and ageless fashions.

“The definition of a specialty store is focus,” said Howard Davidowitz, chairman of Davidowitz & Associates, a national retail consulting firm and investment bank.

Gap does not have that focus, Mr. Davidowitz said. And in trying to meet the needs of infants, teenagers, and even the elderly, its designers play it safe, season after season. “The merchandise is booooooring,” Mr. Davidowitz added. “Too basic.”

Patricia Longo, a 36-year-old makeup artist who lives in Manhattan, is the kind of style-obsessed shopper who has little use for Gap these days. She wears Ugg boots, a Betsey Johnson bag, a Pepe Jeans jacket and a cotton taupe Ella Moss dress.

“They don’t have the new fads,” she said of Gap. “When I look for something new and young and trendy, Gap is not coming to my head.”

And it is not that she buys only designer clothes. Ms. Longo covets designer knockoffs, which is why she shops at H&M, the Swedish retailer known for its fresh-from-the-runway fashions.

So what is Gap to do?

A Gap spokesman, Greg Rossiter, said the company was “totally committed to returning these brands to the leadership they enjoyed for so many years.”

For that to happen, retail analysts said, the chain could start by shrinking, to give its clothes the kind of cachet that Gap had decades ago, before it operated 1,295 stores (not to mention hundreds more Banana Republic and Old Navy stores, which bring the total to more than 3,000). Abercrombie & Fitch, for example, has 361 stores for its flagship brand.

Next, analysts said, it could experiment with brands, as several new specialty clothing stores have started to do. When Martin & Osa, a clothing store aimed at people in their 30s created by American Eagle Outfitters, opened in 2006, it carried its own store brand as well as bags from North Face, sunglasses from Ray-Ban and track jackets from Adidas.

Gap used to carry Levi’s jeans but stopped in 1991. Today, it stocks a single outside brand, Converse sneakers.

Finally, Gap could focus on a narrow group of consumers, and tailor clothing to meet their needs — a prospect that would probably require the chain to become much smaller. “They have to pick out a demographic and go after it with a maniacal focus, to the exclusion of anyone else,” said Bob Buchanan, an analyst at A. G. Edwards & Sons.

“If there is one thing you cannot be in the middle of the mall anymore, it is all things to all people,” he added. “And that is what Gap has been trying to do.”

Big hope for small markets

Akron, as well as New York, star of Federated holiday

by Lisa Biank Fasig
Cincinnati Business Courier - December 22, 2006

To an important degree, the sales performance of Federated Department Stores this Christmas depends on how well it does in Akron.

It is in the dozens of markets such as this one, where Macy's is a new and welcome brand, that Federated has much to gain after converting some 400 May Co. stores in September, analysts and industry veterans say. Sure, shoppers in Chicago are grabbing headlines with complaints about losing the Marshall Field's brand, but in smaller markets - like Akron, Tulsa, Okla., and Rochester, N.Y., - shoppers are waiting, credit cards poised, for Macy's to lift their mediocre shopping experience.

And Federated has a high target: It recently raised its same-store sale projections for December to 5 to 8 percent, from 3 to 5 percent.

The problem? It's the original Macy's locations, known as the legacy stores, that have been driving those sales. The former May Co. locations have been "disappointing," Federated said, without providing specifics. (Federated will not break out figures of its May stores operations until February, after it has owned the company for one fiscal year.)

"They put extraordinary attention to making the transition easier in the cities where there was an emotional connection," said Candace Corlett, a principal at WSL Strategic Retail in New York. "(But) we underplayed the number of cities that are getting a Macy's."

What wasn't underplayed was the relaunch of Macy's as a national brand. Federated's ambitious advertising campaign, featuring Susan Sarandon and other stars, might have contributed to the overall strength of the department store sector this shopping season. In November, the same-store sales index of department stores rose 3.8 percent, compared with 1 percent at department stores, according to Bloomberg.

"The Federated stores are doing extremely well. They're benefiting from the advertising," said retail consultant Walter Loeb. "The May stores still have to gain an identity."

Federated has, for instance, ended the aggressive sales promotions that May customers have grown accustomed to at Christmas, Loeb said. Many shoppers are still holding out, expecting coupons and deep discounts. Meanwhile, in markets such as Cleveland, Federated underestimated the spending power of its May shoppers, said analyst Jeff Stein with KeyBanc Capital Markets.

Regardless, Wall Street is more or less forgiving Federated for May's flavorless sales. (Shares closed Dec. 20 at $38.51, up about 18 percent from one year ago.) Timing is part of the reason: Federated began swapping merchandise at May stores in September, replacing the old labels with the Macy's lineup. Some missteps were expected.

"To expect them to turn 400 stores with new merchandise, new nameplates, the same store personnel and with a reduced level of couponing -- to expect all of that to happen and not have the customers blink once or twice -- I would think is unrealistic," Stein said.

Federated spokesman Jim Sluzewski said the retailer gauged market needs by pairing converted May stores with Macy's stores in similar settings. A store in suburban Cincinnati, for instance, would serve as a starting point to determine what labels to stock in a similarly sized store in suburban Akron. The retailer also asked customers what they wanted to keep at the May stores and what they wanted to lose.

"We continue to learn as we go along," Sluzewski said. "It is simply taking a little longer than we had initially thought."

Among the unexpected trip-ups: the home department, where lead times can be three times longer than those of apparel. It can take more than a year to get certain household items on the floor.

As for markets where beloved brands were eliminated, such as in Chicago where Marshall Field's was transformed into Macy's, observers said the backlash is petering out.

"I've been to a couple of the Macy's that have been converted from Marshall Field's, and they seem just as crowded," said Morningstar Inc. analyst Joseph Beaulieu.

Corlett, for one, said she has seen an improvement in service at Macy's stores in the New York and New Jersey markets. "I think they had gotten in touch with how bad they were and they're really working on fixing it," she said.

"What shoppers expect from their favorite store is respect. Stop putting bimbos out there."

And that would apply to Akron, too.

Merry Christmas from Wal-Mart and Macy's

Chain Store Age

Bentonville, Ark. - Wal-Mart Stores is putting the “Christmas” back into the holidays this year. The chain has decided to abandon the generic “Happy Holidays” greeting in favor of having employees greet shoppers by saying “Merry Christmas,” according to a report in USA Today.

The move comes a year after religious and conservative groups criticized Wal-Mart and other retailers for allegedly downplaying Christmas. This year, however, Wal-Mart is embracing the holiday full on, including changing the name of its seasonal-decor department from The Holiday Shop, which it has been for several years, to The Christmas Shop. Stores will play Christmas carols throughout the holiday selling-season and more merchandise will be labeled “Christmas” rather than “holiday” compared to last year.

As it turns out,, Macy’s is also feeling less generic this year, the chain intends to have “Merry Christmas” signs in all departments and all of its window displays will have Christmas themes.

Federated to Exchange Stores with Belk

Wilmington Morning Star and Business Wire

WILMINGTON, N.C. -- Macy's at Mayfaire will become a Belk store

The Macy's in Mayfaire Town Center, a former Hecht's location, will become a Belk next year under a swap deal between the two stores' parent companies, Belk announced Thursday.

Under the agreement, the Mayfaire store will open as a Belk in spring 2007, according to the announcement. In exchange, Belk will turn over a Parisian store in Collierville, Tenn., to Federated Department Stores Inc., the parent of Macy's.

All store associates in good standing at the Mayfaire store will be employed at the Belk, according to the statement.

Belk already operates stores at Independence Mall and Landfall Center.

Charlotte, N.C.-based Belk Inc. is the country's largest privately owned department store company, with 279 Belk stores and 36 Parisian stores in 18 states, mainly in the Southeast.

Macy's Partners With Rwandan Widows

By SARAH DiLORENZO
The Associated Press

NEW YORK -- When Macy's decided to sell baskets made by Rwandan widows, the store was swayed in part by the prospect of contributing to a developing economy and in part by the women's tale of suffering during their country's 1994 genocide.

But Macy's was clear: This may have been charitable, but it was not charity. Baskets, woven from sisal and sweet grass, are inspected to verify they meet quality requirements and then paid for in cash on the spot. Macy's imported 650 baskets last year in a successful test run, and bought 31,000 more to sell this fall in stores in New York, Atlanta and Chicago and online.

"This is a business partnership," said Ronnie Taffet, vice president for public relations at the store, a unit of Federated Department Stores Inc.

Such partnerships are becoming more common. Matthias Stausberg, manager of media relations at the U.N. Global Compact, says the compact has tried to "make the business case," showing companies how these investments can be profitable and a good alternative to philanthropy.

Lloyd Timberlake, director of communications for the World Business Council for Sustainable Development, cited some partnerships with successful results, like Starbucks Corp. and fair-trade coffee growers or DaimlerChrysler AG's investment in Brazilian coconut fiber to use as fill for car headrests.

"It's not going to get very big," he predicted of the Macy's partnership because, unlike the agricultural projects he cited, it wasn't responding to a need, but instead carving out a small niche market.

But Willa Shalit, who started a company to import the baskets for Macy's, has seen the partnership succeed already.

"When you see the child of a weaver, they have shoes, clean clothes, school uniforms, more than one set of clothing," she said.

The money a weaver receives for a typical basket is enough to feed herself for a month. That sum is on average $24, or about one-third of the retail price. Shalit estimates a weaver's income at $4 a day (it takes roughly a week to make a basket), as compared to the average income of $0.56 a day for the country.

Macy's partnership with the Rwandan women grew from perhaps an even more unusual one. The women used the traditional art of basket-making to reach out across ethnic lines after the 100-day genocide, during which at least 500,000 people were killed.

"In practical terms, basket-making is an opportunity for unity, for reconciliation," said Consolee Mukanyiligira, coordinator for the association of genocide widows, known by its French acronym, Avega.

"Nothing like sitting around doing nothing increases trauma," said Mukanyiligira, so Avega encouraged women to weave as a way of healing.

Pascasie Mukabuligo, a master weaver, saw the potential for these baskets as commercial merchandise and organized their sale at local markets. Noeleen Heyzer, director of the United Nations Development Fund for Women, then worked to establish an American market for the goods.

Karen Sherman, COO of Women for Women International, calls the project "holistic" because beyond fair pay, the weavers receive benefits like health care.

Macy's has promised to buy the baskets for as long as its customers do. And the standards an international retailer sets for its partners are high.

Shalit's team says quality is not a problem _ she contends the women make the most refined baskets in the world. The traditional baskets are pagoda-shaped, with tightly fitting lids for roofs. Many are earth-toned, beige with jagged black designs snaking around them. But other egg-shaped baskets, with only tiny lids, have bright blue and pink designs.

Shalit and her colleagues are working to train more weavers and diversify their product.

Macy's has asked their team of designers to work with the women to create a spring line that will be fresh to customers but still consistent with Rwandan tradition.

These complexities can conspire to sink projects, said Isobel Coleman, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. "You have these one-offs. A thousand baskets here, some Mexican clothes there," she said.

Even if this partnership does not last, however, Coleman and other experts said the weavers will benefit from having honed their skills to meet the quality and scale demands of an international market.

Those skills can then be put to use to find new outlets, even perhaps local or regional ones, which Sherman said should be central to any development partnership.

"Ultimately, a local market is more sustainable," she said, and the key to a different kind of "never again" pledge, that of not letting these women slip back into their former poverty.

Lord & Taylor to leave Water Tower Place

Lord & Taylor, Water Tower Place, Chicago, Illinois. (photo by Justin Hall, 2003)

Water Tower Place store to close in spring as owner of indoor mall takes back space; fate of retailer's suburban Chicago outlets is unclear

By Sandra Jones
Chicago Tribune staff reporter

CHICAGO - Lord & Taylor plans to shutter its Water Tower Place store next spring, a move that diminishes the New York retailer's presence in the Chicago area and frees up one of the most prominent locations on the Magnificent Mile.

The decision to leave Michigan Avenue comes one day after investment group NRDC Equity Partners LLC acquired the 48-store chain from Federated Department Stores Inc. for $1.1 billion.

News of the closing follows the conversion of Marshall Field's, also at Water Tower Place, to Macy's last month and changes the face of one of the busiest shopping corners in the city. The two department stores opened as the anchors of Water Tower Place in 1975 and helped the indoor mall--a pioneer in bringing suburban-style shopping to the city--become one of the most popular tourist destinations in Chicago, with an estimated 20 million visitors a year.

Water Tower Place's owner, General Growth Properties Inc., has been eager to redevelop the Lord & Taylor space since acquiring the mall from Maryland's Rouse Co. in 2004.

NRDC, for its part, is concentrating on reviving the storied Lord & Taylor brand, particularly in the Northeast, where the retailer has been a fixture in New York for more than a century. The Purchase, N.Y.-based group, which also owns a stake in Linens 'n Things Inc., plans to put $150 million in capital improvements into Lord & Taylor stores and just hired former Saks Fifth Avenue CEO Christina Johnson to help them.

Lord & Taylor has suffered from neglect under a string of owners, most recently May Department Stores Co. It closed 32 of its weaker stores starting in 2003 and endured several turnaround attempts, losing its luster along the way.

Lord & Taylor is getting out of the Mag Mile property because the lease is up and General Growth wants to take back the space, said Johnson.

"This is not a decision of our making," said Johnson. "We would have liked to have remained."

Still, it is unclear if NRDC will keep the remaining four Lord & Taylor stores in the Chicago area. The Chicago-area stores combined generate roughly $120 million in sales, according to a person familiar with the stores. That's less than 10 percent of the chain's $1.4 billion in annual sales last year.

The remaining stores are at Northbrook Court in Northbrook, Woodfield mall in Schaumburg, Oakbrook Center in Oak Brook and Old Orchard in Skokie.

The Northbrook Court store is the most likely to be closed, according to a person familiar with the plans. General Growth is close to a deal to take the space back from NRDC and will most likely redevelop it.

General Growth officials declined to comment on the Northbrook store's future and declined to disclose plans for the Water Tower space.

"We're looking at a bunch of options," said Mitch Feldman, Water Tower's general manager. It will take three to six months to finalize plans, he said.

NRDC's Johnson also declined to comment specifically on the Northbrook store, but said, "We have no plans to close any stores."

Lord & Taylor's sales at the Mag Mile outpost have been declining for years, ringing up an estimated $25 million to $30 million a year, down from as much as $50 million in the store's heyday, according to people familiar with the store.

General Growth has been looking for ways to boost Water Tower's sales from a relatively mediocre $500 per square foot to as much as $900 within three to five years.

Department stores have traditionally paid minimal rent in exchange for their drawing power. Breaking up the seven-level, 140,000-square-foot Lord & Taylor space into smaller units aimed at specialty stores and restaurants would allow General Growth to generate high rents, said Allen Joffe, retail real estate broker at Baum Realty Group Inc. in Chicago. "Spaces like that don't come on the market very often," he said.

American Girl Place, located just down the street, looked at the site this year as a way to expand its doll store and playland for girls. Von Maur, the Davenport, Iowa-based department store, has also been eager to expand in Chicago and has had its eye on Lord & Taylor real estate.

American Girl officials couldn't be reached for comment.

New York based retail consultant Burt Flickinger predicts that despite Lord & Taylor's loyal customers in the Northeast, it has a chance to improve its business in Chicago, particularly as Macy's wrestles to attract shoppers disenchanted with its takeover of Marshall Field's.

"There is definitely a place for Lord & Taylor," said Flickinger. "When they've got their merchandising magic working for them, it's a very productive store. With consumers being very disappointed that Marshall Field's is gone, there's a great opportunity."

Federated Throws New Weight Around

SUZANNE KAPNER
New York Post

NEW YORK -- Pressure is mounting on companies that manufacture goods sold in Federated Department Stores to change the way they do business to better accommodate the giant retailer.

Manufacturers are being asked to shorten lead times, increase the frequency of shipments and make their products more fashionable, sources said.

Federated's acquisition of the May Department Stores Company created the country's largest department store chain and the only one with a national footprint under the Macy's name.

Much the way Wal-Mart used its size to wring concessions from suppliers, Federated is exercising its newfound clout to encourage manufacturers to change how they source, make and ship goods to its more than 850 stores.

"Federated is now in a position to dictate to a greater extent, and I don't expect them to hold back," said one source, who requested anonymity.

In a series of meetings with suppliers over the past two days, Federated executives, including Chief Executive Terry Lundgren and Vice Chairman Janet Grove, laid out a plan that included more exclusive offerings and faster shipments of fashion items from once a month to twice a month.

"The typical consumer shops our stores once a week, and we need to show them something new and different," Grove said, according to someone who attended the meeting.

Grove was not immediately available for comment.

The strategy carries increased risk for both Federated, which could become too dependent on the vagaries of fashion, and its suppliers, who are being asked to restructure their businesses at a time of growing uncertainty for apparel manufacturers.

"It's a noble goal," said one executive. "But how easily can we adapt?"

With the bulk of apparel, shoes and handbags manufactured in Asia, lead times from conception to delivery can run as long as nine months, a timeframe Federated would like to whittle down to three.

One way to speed production is by stationing key executives in Asia, where they can approve samples as soon as they are made, instead of flying samples to New York and back. The shorter lead times and more frequent shipments help to increase inventory turns - the amount of time it takes a retailer to sell through inventory - which, in turn, boost sales.

Federated is using a program called 20/20 to help it quickly identify the best- and worst-selling merchandise.

The system allows Federated to quickly reorder the 20 percent of items that are selling the best and clear out the 20 percent that are selling worst by marking them down.

Traditionalists mourn demise of Marshall Field's

By CARLA K. JOHNSON
The Associated Press

CHICAGO — Protesters marched, carried signs and called for a boycott Saturday because their beloved Marshall Field's, a shoppers' magnet on State Street for more than 100 years, had been replaced by a New York icon: Macy's.

Signs with phrases like "Hell No. Not My Dough" and "Macy's Is Just Wal-Mart with Pretension" were carried by demonstrators, who also toted signature green Field's shopping bags.

The store is one of about 400 properties nationwide being converted to the Macy's nameplate by Federated Department Stores, which acquired the properties when it bought May Department Stores last year.

But unlike most of them, the big Marshall Field's store had amassed generations worth of loyalty.

Amelia James said she treasures childhood memories of dressing up in white gloves to have lunch in the store's Walnut Room with her grandmother Grace Denny Elder. She said she was going to cut up her Field's credit card and boycott Macy's.

"My grandmother was born in 1898. She shopped here her whole life," said James, 48, of Chicago. "There were six kids in our family. We didn't have a lot of money, but when she brought us here to Marshall Field's, it was one of the most special things."

The store was built in stages from 1892 to 1914. Its name came from retailer Marshall Field, who got his start as a salesman in a Chicago dry-goods store in 1852.

James was one of roughly 100 demonstrators who objected to the name change Saturday.

At the same time, hundreds of shoppers started lining up two hours before the doors opened. Once inside, they listened to a jazz quintet as they used $10 Macy's gift cards handed out to the first arrivals. Workers in Macy's T-shirts offered silver trays of doughnut holes and coffee in glass cups.

"Things change," said Chicagoan Mary Peterson, 64, the first person in line before the store opened. Peterson worked for 18 years at Field's, packing the store's popular Frango mints into boxes as they came off the conveyor belt in the candy kitchen. She said she welcomes Macy's.

Macy's officials, who said they have no plans to reverse their decision, hope to lure back any unhappy shoppers.

"We understand this is an emotional time and people are passionate about the name," Macy's spokeswoman Jennifer McNamara said. "We hope they'll give us a chance to demonstrate that the essence of what our customers love about Marshall Field's will continue at Macy's."

Macy's will retain such traditions as the Walnut Room restaurant and the green clocks at the building's corners.

Federated, based in Cincinnati, became the nation's largest department-store retailer when it bought May. The switch to the Macy's nameplate will give Federated a total of more than 800 Macy's stores in 45 states, the District of Columbia, Guam and Puerto Rico.

the big day

Macy's is now officially coast to coast. We'll see how long this lasts.

The Macy's Stars dance down Smithfield Street in Downtown Pittsburgh during a block party marking the opening of the new department store in the former Kaufmann's building. (James Knox/Tribune-Review)

Askin' for a little respect

Samantha Thompson Smith, Staff Writer
The News and Observer, Raleigh, N.C.

RALEIGH, N.C. -- All we ask, Macy's, is that you don't break our hearts.

We can't take it from another department store chain, you see. We've been through enough already.

It's not that we haven't been welcoming. For almost two decades, we've opened our arms and hearts to new department store chains to the Triangle -- chains that promised us the best, but often didn't actually deliver.

You see, after Hecht's took over Thalhimers in the early 1990s, it opened its new Crabtree Valley Mall store. We were promised an "A" store -- packed with brands that weren't already in the market and were considered high-end, designer, contemporary. In the end, we got Lauren, Tommy Hilfiger, Liz Claiborne and Nautica. Nice stuff, but most of it wasn't exclusive or different. In fact, it was a lot like what we already had at Belk.

It got more painful than that. Who could forget the slow, painful death of Lord & Taylor at Crabtree? It, too, was promised to be an "A" store when it opened in 1995 packed with many of the same merchandise -- such as Tahari and Oleg Cassini -- as at Lord & Taylor stores in bigger markets.

By the time it closed in late February, it was a messy outlet type of store full of two-seasons-old clothes from other defunct Lord & Taylor stores.

We're still not sure how our relationship is going with Nordstrom and Saks Fifth Avenue. However, there are some signs the stores aren't giving us the best they have to offer.

Take the Nordstorm at Durham's The Streets at Southpoint. And then look at the 16-page Nordstrom ad in the September Vogue magazine. The ad is packed with brands that aren't in the store: Chloe shoes, Zac Posen handbags, Proenza Schouler coats. At least we can get them online at www.nordstrom.com.

Then there's that little issue about the Charlotte Nordstrom at SouthPark mall, which carries contemporary designs by Tracy Reese, Chaiken, D&G and Milly.

And the Saks Fifth Avenue at Triangle Town Center still doesn't have some of the luxury brands, such as Gucci and Prada, we've been hoping for since it opened two years ago.

Of course, there hasn't always been disappointment. When Dillard's bought Ivey's in the early 1990s, Dillard's didn't make promises. The only real worry was that Dillard's wouldn't have sales as good as Ivey's used to. Today, Dillard's continues to improve its brand mix, including the addition of Kors by Michael Kors, Kenzie, BCBG Girls and David Meister, brands that help it stand out a bit from other department stores.

And who could forget the department store chain that raised us: Charlotte-based Belk. If anything, the chain has only gotten better. The Belk at Crabtree is among the only retailers in the state selling women's apparel by contemporary designer Marc Jacobs. It's also stocked with a collection of BCBG Max Azria, Elie Tahari and Theory separates and Betsey Johnson and Vera Wang dresses -- brands that used to only be found at specialty stores.

We'll give you a chance, Macy's. All we ask is that you do the same for us.

© Copyright 2006, The News & Observer Publishing Company

Culture at the counter

By Jan Whitaker
originally published in the Boston Globe

JUST AS THEY pioneered modern escalators to carry crowds of shoppers upward, department stores encouraged their customers' social mobility. The big stores grew up with a burgeoning American middle class that they provided with its tastes, habits -- and consumer goods.

As full-service department stores continue to disappear, it becomes clear just what influential organizations they were in shaping the lives of millions.

With concerts, lectures, style forums, art shows, science exhibits, and book festivals, the big stores showed Americans how their lives could be richer and more gratifying. Sometimes employing deadly earnestness and at other times circus-like antics, they caught the public's imagination and sold them an American way of life, complete with gold-rimmed dinner plates, pianos, prom dresses, and engraved invitations.

Along with the goods came lessons on child psychology, galleries hung with oil paintings, symphonies, author teas, and countless other edifying sights and sounds. Salvador Dali designed show windows at Bonwit-Teller; Leopold Stokowski conducted an orchestra at Wanamaker's in Philadelphia; and William James discussed philosophy at Filene's. The Federal Children's Bureau worked with department stores to instruct parents on the health and well-being of infants.

For decades the largest booksellers in many cities were department stores. In 1904, The Wall Street Journal reported that Wanamaker's in Philadelphia ran the largest book shop in the world. Although many early department store books were cheap reprints of first-run editions, their lower prices put books in the hands of a wider spectrum of readers than ever before. Jordan Marsh boasted of a ``colossal book display" in 1897, featuring ``Quo Vadis" selling briskly at half the regular price. The store also claimed to have an ``enormous stock of juvenile books," a true department store merchandise stronghold. Department stores' professional book buyers dominated the American Booksellers Association through much of the 20th century, as well as hosting some of the first author tours and book festivals.

Museums in the 1920s looked to department stores as models. At a style forum at Kaufmann's Department Store in Pittsburgh, Stewart Culin of the Brooklyn Museum declared, ``The department store stands for the greatest influences for culture and taste that exist today in America." The director of the Newark Museum, John Cotton Dana, acknowledged that a first-class department store was more like a good museum than any of the actual museums of 1928. The stores were judged far more skillful at display, less intimidating to the public, and better overall at drawing crowds to view art works and exhibits of modern industrial design. They attracted thousands to symposiums on style, such as Macy's 1927 Art in Trade show that presented a weeklong program of talks by designers, scholars, and museum curators.

Art galleries in the big stores dated back to the late 19th century. Jordan Marsh proclaimed its new 1894 exhibit space had good lighting, perfect for displaying work ``from the studios of Boston's best artists." Local artists were always popular, as were sentimental subjects, but department stores also showed paintings by Picasso, Rosa Bonheur (at Watt & Shand in Lancaster, Pa., in 1908), the ``ashcan school," European cubists, and social realists.

The wonders of science and technology were demonstrated in stores' lighting systems, pneumatic tubes, elevators, and escalators, all of which fascinated the public at a time when most people lacked modern conveniences at home. But the stores also presented natural history exhibits, expositions on how electricity worked, and attractions such as Lindbergh's Spirit of St. Louis and, later, space suits worn by the first astronauts.

The stores' attractions were free and open to all. Of course department stores are businesses that must focus intently on the bottom line, but they built their fortunes on the notion that as their customers prospered and developed more artistically discriminating tastes, they would buy better merchandise and profits would rise accordingly.

By the 1960s, a large US middle class took it for granted that local department stores were reliable links to the mores, manners, and material accoutrements of mainstream American life. But, despite success as social arbiters, the big stores' high cost of distribution -- due in part to special events and lavish services -- undermined profits. In city after city they closed or were consolidated in buyouts.

The department store represented a historic confluence of merchandising creativity and social aspirations that may be impossible to replace.

Jan Whitaker is author of ``Service & Style: How the American Department Store Fashioned the Middle Class."

Just browsing at the mall?

That's what you think

By Mindy Fetterman and Jayne O'Donnell, USA TODAY

As you step in the door of a retail store — whether it sells Gucci handbags, jeans for teens or hardware — you're being lured to shop and spend in ways so subtle you probably don't know what's happening to you.

Or your wallet.

Retailers know how you'll approach a store, where you'll hesitate, how to affect your mood, how to pique your desires, how to play to your aspirations. Everything in a store, from lighting to floor color to music to how goods are displayed, is meant in some way to get you to not just shop, but spend.

PHOTOS: Think you're just browsing?

"It's like a Broadway musical," says Deborah Mitchell, a marketing expert at the University of Wisconsin. "Nothing was put into that musical that wasn't thought through. It's the same in a highly orchestrated retail environment."

At a Sony Style store, for instance, the subtle fragrance of vanilla and mandarin orange — designed exclusively for Sony — wafts down on shoppers, relaxing them and helping them believe that this is a very nice place to be.

ADVICE: Understanding why you're shopping can help curb it

Everything in the store is designed to encourage touch, from the silk wallpaper to the smooth maple wood cabinets to the etched-glass countertops. Products are displayed like museum pieces and set up for you to touch and try.

Once you touch something, Sony figures, you'll buy it.

At a new Home Depot in the Atlanta suburb of Buckhead, the entranceway lures shoppers in with an open floor plan so they get a better "vista" of the store.

Floor-to-ceiling racks of goods, long the signature of the warehouse store, are further back. Lower displays of expensive goods — riding lawn mowers, upscale porch furniture and a home design center for redecorating kitchen, bath and flooring — are clustered so they're visible from the front door.

At a JCPenney, a "decompression area" at the front of the store lets shoppers get acclimated and calm down from the noise in the mall or on the street. Three dressed mannequins offer a taste of the season's hot trends and set up a line of sight to the shopping ahead.

At a Macy's department store, salespeople stand about 10 feet inside the entrance, ready to spritz visitors with perfume.

All are ways to engage you in the store and draw you in.

The sound
Music has been used by retailers for decades as a way to identify their stores and affect a shopper's mood, to make you feel happy, nostalgic or relaxed so you linger. Think of '50s cocktail bar music in a Pottery Barn.

But retailers are becoming more sophisticated in how they use music. JCPenney has just finished installing a new system for its stores that allows certain music to be played at certain times of the day. It can "zone" music by demographics, playing more Latin music in stores where there's a higher Hispanic population — all controlled by headquarters in Plano, Texas.

"Most people know they are being influenced subliminally when they shop," says Bernadette Schleis, whose company studies consumer behavior. "They just may not realize how much."

To help you understand what's happening when you go shopping, here's a guide: How Retailers Lure You to Shop and Buy.

The aroma
Anyone who's walked into a mall has been enticed by the smell of cinnamon buns or chocolate chip cookies. Now, retailers such as Sony and shirtmaker Thomas Pink are developing "signature scents" that you smell only in their stores.

"Scent is so closely aligned with your emotions, it's so primitive," says David Van Epps, president of ScentAir, a Charlotte company that develops exclusive scents for businesses, including Sony. His firm's revenue, number of employees and output have tripled in the past two years, he says.

"Imagine you're trying to create the same level of brand loyalty that Harley-Davidson has when a guy is willing to tattoo his arm with the words 'Harley-Davidson.' That's what we're going for."

Other retailers might not have signature scents, but they use fragrance. Bloomingdale's uses different essences in different departments: baby powder in the baby store; suntan lotion in the bathing suit area; lilacs in lingerie; cinnamon and pine scent during the holiday season.

"We even fragranced their outside (display) windows in New York last year," says Van Epps. "They did a Phantom of the Opera display, and we fragranced it with rose."

Thomas Pink pipes the smell of clean, pressed shirts into its stores. The essence of lavender wafts out of L'Occitane skin-care stores.

And if brightly colored window displays aren't enough to lure you into a Williams-Sonoma kitchen store, the scents from frequent cooking demonstrations may. "It feels like you are in someone else's house," says Michelle Bogan, a retail consultant for Kurt Salmon Associates.

Sony decided to create its own scent for its Sony Style stores as one way to make the consumer electronics it sells less intimidating, particularly to women. "From research, we found that scent is closest to the brain and will evoke the most emotion, even faster than the eye," says Dennis Syracuse, senior vice president of consumer retail sales. "Our scent helps us create an environment like no other."

How retailers use scent can be tricky, though, Mitchell says.

"Not everyone agrees what smells good."

The entrance
The scent may have lured you near, but what's in the entrance is the spring on the trap. That's where you'll see some of the glitziest, most expensive stuff in the store — the stuff you wish you could buy.

"The key businesses that draw women — the high-volume, high-profit goods — are right up front: handbags, cosmetics, jewelry and sometimes, intimate apparel," says Dan Butler, a National Retail Federation vice president.

The entrance is important because it hints at what's inside that you must have. "We're trying to give her ideas right as she's walking into the store," says Karen Meskey-Wilson, vice president of store design for JCPenney.

Stores that cater to teens often pick one hot item and heavily promote it in their windows to increase demand, says consultant Bogan. Gap is doing that this fall with denim. The new "skinny" jeans style may push people to update their wardrobes, she says.

"The idea is that there is so much excitement about great new jeans that you'll want to go out and buy some, even if you don't need jeans," she says.

Others use a less-is-more tactic. Abercrombie & Fitch lures teens into its Ruehl stores by not having merchandise visible from the mall. You have to go into the store, which looks like a Greenwich Village apartment inside, to see if you like anything. Once inside, the retailer hopes its soft lighting, couches and books will make you want to stay and buy.

In department stores, merchants battle to get the best spots up front for their goods; those that sell the most get the prime positions. Cosmetics, which never go on sale, are among the most profitable items sold in department stores, Butler says. Free makeovers lure clients in and create a "sense of connection and obligation," says consumer psychologist Kit Yarrow.

"A nationally known makeup artist can sell $30,000 in cosmetics in one day," says Butler of the NRF.

The flow
How you as a shopper move in and around a store is not, really, up to you.

You're funneled from the store's entrance past its most expensive goods through a maze of aisles and into departments that are set up as stores-within-a-store. Then you find yourself on "the racetrack," an oval aisle that carries you around the entire building to get a look at everything.

It's the same at a department store or a home renovation store or, on a different scale, in a specialty retailer

Mini-displays called "trend stations" are parked in the middle of aisles to stop shoppers' progress and entice them to look and buy.

Lifestyle vignettes, such as carefully constructed mini-bedrooms or mini-bathrooms, make shoppers stop and look. Home Depot is using such vignettes in its Buckhead store to showcase its expanded kitchen and bathroom goods, including new vessel sinks and architectural designs for cabinets. The displays may be adopted in other new and renovated stores.

"Customers are so much more sophisticated in décor and wanting to take a risk in their home. So we're getting more sophisticated in our presentation," says Kim McKesson, senior vice president of store merchandising. "Our bathrooms aren't just knock-down white cabinets anymore."

If you like the look, whatever the look is, you can have it right away. All goods in the displays are within arm's reach.

"It's incredible to watch people as they walk up, see the mannequins and pick up the whole outfit," says Meskey-Wilson of JCPenney. "We're seeing great sell-through."

Sony Style has mini-living rooms set up to showcase what its 40-inch flat-panel TV would look like over a fireplace. "We've had customers bring in their architect and say, 'Re-create this in my house. I want the whole setup,' " says Syracuse of Sony.

Narrow aisles crammed with goods are going away.

"Twenty years ago, the founders wanted you to get lost in the store," spokesman David Sandor says of Home Depot's founding partners, Bernard Marcus and Arthur Blank. That's why Home Depots were laid out with long narrow aisles and no cut-across in the middle of the store.

Now, Home Depot is widening its aisles and lowering displays so customers can touch and feel products. JCPenney is "really weeding out the stuff in our stores," says Mike Boylson, chief marketing officer. The retailer used to have eight to 10 rows of merchandise in each area. As it opens new stores or renovates existing ones, it's cutting that to four.

"You don't have to go through a sea of racks anymore," says Meskey-Wilson.

Most consumers come into a store and head to the right, says consultant Bogan. That's why retailers, including Williams Sonoma, put high-priced impulse items to the right of the front door, such as a $150 wine opener.

"The No. 1 thing retailers are trying to do is to get people to make impulse purchases," says Yarrow, also a business professor at San Francisco's Golden Gate University.

And you thought you had a list and were going to stick to it.

Macy's shows lack of street sense regarding landmark Field's store

Sandra Jones
Chicago Tribune

CHICAGO -- Signs of Macy's approaching takeover of Marshall Field's on State Street are everywhere. Trouble is, some of them are the wrong signs.

New backlighted directional signs posted throughout the store near escalator banks make it clear that the new owner of Field's doesn't spend much time in Chicago.

The New York department store chain mistakenly labeled Wabash Avenue as "Wabash Street," Randolph Street as "Randolph Avenue" and Washington Street as "Washington Avenue."

The gaffe is striking, given that all Macy's signmakers had to do was to look above the doors on the first floor of the Field's flagship to locate the correct names, inscribed decades ago to help navigate the blockwide store.

Transplanted New Yorker Mike Doyle spotted the snafu walking through the store Wednesday morning and posted it on his Chicago Carless blog that afternoon.

"While that's not a critical faux pas, it's certainly embarrassing and not the best way to try to prove to Chicago locals that the Gotham retailer is taking its move to State Street seriously," Doyle wrote on his blog.

The Field's chain, including the State Street store, officially becomes Macy's on Sept. 9.

Macy's North spokeswoman Jennifer McNamara was unaware of the error when first contacted by the Chicago Tribune. After looking into the matter, she said: "We are addressing the signage. They will be pulled down, and we will be replacing those. Our plan is to get those up as soon as possible."

Macy's isn't the only organization to temporarily lose its way. The Chicago Transit Authority is spending $75,000 to reprint 3,000 maps on its trains after incorrect street names and a wrong phone number were discovered.

And in 2001, when Boeing Co. touted its headquarters move to Chicago with full-page newspaper ads, it inadvertently flipped the photo negative so the John Hancock Center was on the west side of North Michigan Avenue.