[Business Insiderで英語学習！]メイシーズの歴史と今後の課題とは？[9分動画]

Macy's has shaped our culture in more ways than we realize from the way we shop to the way we celebrate holidays to even the invention of the retail Santa. At its peak it was a symbol of retail innovation and cultural significance but sales have been slipping for decades and Macy's has been closing stores and letting go hundreds of people making us wonder if the department store will fade in prominence like Sears Kmart and other Titans. So what went wrong and can Macy's make a comeback?

Macy started as a small dry goods store in New York City back in 1858. It was called RH Macy and Co and it was the fourth business attempt by founder Rowland Hussey Macy. On its opening day the store only made $116 but sales quickly increased and after a year they reached $85,000. In the following years Macy's expanded into 11 buildings around 14th Street in Manhattan. That was the store's first location.

With his new business Macy implemented a series of business practices that we'd never seen before in the retail industry. For example at that time bargaining and bidding were the norm. Discounts were frequent and it was common for customers to buy now and pay later but Macy added label prices to all goods and he stuck to it with no negotiation. He also insisted on immediate payment and cash. The American entrepreneur started the custom of pricing goods in odd figures instead of round numbers like $4.95 instead of $5. He thought this strategy would force his staff to be more diligent with how sales were accounted for making it more difficult them to pocket money without being caught.

Macy was also the first to advertise prices in newspapers and offer money back if customers weren't happy. His new stores included a made-to-measure clothing service that launched the idea of tailoring at big department stores. In the 1860s Macy's became the first retail store to get a liquor license to serve alcohol. By 1862 it created the concept of the retail Santa and just two years later the company established the tradition of holiday windows giving birth to window shopping and spawning an entire industry dedicated to designing elaborate store window displays.

Ran Hussey Macy died in 1877 but his family kept running the store until another one took over: the Strauss family. Nathan and Isidor Strauss were familiar with the store because they were already doing business there. They were selling imported china and glassware to RH Macy and had started renting retail space to establish a china department. In 1896 the Strauss family officially bought the company and in 1902 the Strauss family moved Macy's uptown to Herald Square. The move was a meticulously planned operation. It included a procession of 250 delivery wagons all going up 6th Avenue. The New York Times reported that it was the greatest moving that ever happened in New York.

That nine-story store would become an iconic location in pop culture. It had 33 elevators and four wooden escalators, one of the first to be used in an American store. It initially consisted of just one building and was about 1 million square feet but the store soon expanded through new construction eventually taking up almost the whole block making it a little over 2 million square feet. The department store had everything except for one corner. This tiny slice of Manhattan is known as the million-dollar corner because Macy's has never been able to buy it. And with all this new construction Macy's eventually became the world's largest store in 1924, the same year they hosted their first Thanksgiving Day parade which included animals from the Central Park Zoo. 10,000 people gathered to watch this amazing event. After a few additions, giant floats were introduced and became an essential part of this iconic parade.

In 1947 Macy's was really making a name for itself in pop culture especially with its role in the movie Miracle on 34th Street. What do you want for Christmas Peter? I want a fire engine just like the big one. Fine, ain't got me, nobody's got me. And in 1976 it started its annual 4th of July firework show which continues to this day. Over the years Macy's continued to scale up opening regional stores all around the US from San Francisco to Atlanta. Macy's was capitalizing on growth and taking risks by stocking up on lots of inventory while other stores were being cautious and controlling how much products had on their shelves. Macy's stores always had product to sell. At the same time competitors were reducing the number of buyers who chose what to sell and started relying more on suppliers. Well Macy's did the opposite. They hired more specialized buyers so that each could focus on specific sections of the store. 
That helped them identify products that customers would love and even uncover new business opportunities. And while other retailers were investing in research and strategic planning setting firm targets for return on investment and other benchmarks Macy's didn't. They didn't really believe in having strict returns on financial goals. So in the mid-1980s the iconic department store started seeing the first signs of trouble. The whole retail industry was experiencing an economic slowdown but for Macy's the downturn was worse because they had already had high internal costs. The company was spending a lot of money rolling out more private labeled products and on ads to attract upscale customers. Their $500 million expansion across the American South also didn't help. Reports suggest they overestimated demand which led to stockpiling way beyond anticipated sales.
 They also had to slash prices to clear out their excess stock. All of that made it very hard for Macy's to pay its bills. Crushed by a $6 billion debt Macy's filed for bankruptcy in 1992. By 1994 Macy's was acquired by Federated Department Stores a company that already owned its rivals like Bloomingdale's and Abraham and Strauss. With this purchase it became the largest department store retailer in America.

In the 2000s the company tried a few different strategies to revitalize its business. It launched new brands and smaller stores. It also started some major collaborations with celebrities like Kate Moss and Sarah Jessica Parker. It beefed up its rewards card to attract shoppers and opened its off-price store Macy's Backstage. But Macy's has been slow to adapt to online shopping and new consumer trends at a time when many customers were already walking away from department stores. On top of that Macy's has been facing stronger competition from discount retailers like TJ Maxx and Burlington and more recently from fast fashion giants like Zara, H&M and newcomers like Shein and Temu. So Macy's has not been able to slow down this retail apocalypse. 
Sales dropped and Macy's began closing stores around the US. In February 2020 Macy's announced a massive restructuring that would close 125 stores and cut 2,000 jobs. The goal of the plan was to generate savings of about $1.5 billion a year by 2022. The plan involved experimenting with concept stores that operate outside of traditional malls. In 2021 Macy's also joined the crypto craze auctioning off NFTs depicting its most iconic Thanksgiving Day parade floats. But in 2023 Macy's closed another wave of stores. Behind the scenes the company also underwent a series of executive shakeups. By February 2023 Macy's CEO Jeff Gennette retired after working at the company for 40 years. He was replaced by Tony Spring the CEO of Bloomingdale's. Today Macy's runs 502 stores under its own banner. An investor group offered $5.8 billion to buy Macy's. The company declined though citing a lack of compelling value. Shortly after Macy's announced it would close another 150 stores in the next three years. The closures will leave the company with about 350 full-size Macy's department stores. That's less than half of what they had a decade ago. But in March the same investors returned to Macy's and upped their takeover offer to $6.6 billion. That offer is still under consideration. The fate of the retail giant remains unknown but no matter what happens next Macy's will always hold a significant part of our cultural life and history.