Macy's plans to "reopen all of its 775 stores, including Bloomingdale’s, Bluemercury and its major flagships in Manhattan, in the next six to eight weeks," the New York Times reports.
Here's the plan, according to the Times:
"The reopenings are expected to start on Monday, with 68 stores in Georgia, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee and Texas. Macy’s will reopen 50 more locations on May 11. The company’s stores have been closed since March 18 because of the coronavirus pandemic, causing the majority of its sales to disappear.
"Macy’s expects its reopened stores to bring in only about 15 to 20 percent of their typical business at first and 'slowly build' from there, the company’s chief executive, Jeff Gennette, said during a presentation. Whether shoppers would return, he acknowledged, was an open question."
The stores won't be the same, the Times writes: "'No touch' consultations will be the rule at beauty counters. Ear piercing, bra fittings and alterations will be temporarily suspended. Fitting rooms will be limited. Employees will wear company-issued cloth masks. And trying on dress shirts? Forget about it."
- KC's View:
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I always found Macy's stores to be kind of antiseptic when when the economy was in better shape … and the problems it had only have been exacerbated and highlighted by the pandemic. Hard to imagine that people will go rushing back to Macy's for the compelling, differentiated and entertaining experience of shopping there.
