Expanding Macy’s Brand Nationwide
Standing outside the Bon Marche department store in downtown Seattle, Marguerite Norbut lamented the day that workers replaced the sign she’d walked past for years with a new but familiar name: Macy’s.
“I’ve seen it since I was a little girl!” said Norbut, 54, who grew up just across Puget Sound and has shopped at various Bon stores in the Northwest her entire life.
But Norbut’s daughter, Rachael, 22, heard a ring of urban sophistication, a reaction that would doubtless please the executives at Federated Department Stores Inc., Macy’s parent company.
“I’ve always associated Macy’s with California and the East Coast,” the younger Norbut said.
For better or worse, it’s the end of a retailing era for Seattle and other cities around the country. On Sunday, customers of the Bon, Rich’s, Goldsmith’s, Burdines and Lazarus lost -- at least in name -- the regional department stores that have been around for more than a century. Federated has rechristened them under the national Macy’s brand.
Longtime shoppers have had the opportunity to get used to the change -- Federated had already begun hyphenating “Macy’s” onto the more familiar store names before deciding to get rid of the regional names altogether. Dan Edelman, chief executive of Macy’s Northwest, said Federated decided to drop the hyphenations after customer surveys showed that most would not find the name change to be a negative.
The loss of regional branding is likely to continue with Cincinnati-based Federated’s proposed merger with May Department Stores Co., which was announced last week. Spokeswoman Carol Sanger said the merger probably would mean that many of May’s regional stores also eventually would become Macy’s stores. She said the company was still considering what to do with two of May’s best-known brand names: Lord & Taylor and Marshall Field’s.
Retailers’ monthly sales results released Thursday illustrated that the Macy’s franchise has put Federated in a position of relative strength. While Federated’s February sales were better than expected, May’s results fell short of Wall Street forecasts.
Analysts say the name changes are inevitable because they save Federated money and give it the much-needed ability to market itself nationally and compete better against other national brand names such as Gap Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores Inc. Along with the name change, the company plans a national television campaign, and it is touting other advantages such as easier national return policies and nationally branded store credit cards.
“I think it’s kind of representative of the times,” said Kim Picciola, an analyst with Chicago-based Morningstar Inc. “We are more focused on national brands as a consumer these days than we are on regional brands.”
Still, some longtime shoppers think it’s bad business to scrap a popular local brand name such as Rich’s in Georgia.
“I don’t know why they would want to drop the name. In Atlanta, it’s as recognizable as Coca-Cola,” said Elizabeth Brown, a retired schoolteacher from Marietta, Ga., who was shopping at a Rich’s store in Kennesaw, a northern suburb of Atlanta.
The company insisted it was taking pains to keep some regional feeling despite the name change. Edelman said the former Bon would have its own promotional calendar and some flexibility in carrying clothing that fits regional weather and sensibilities. The Northwest stores also will still sell their well-loved Frangos mints.
But Marshal Cohen, chief analyst with NPD Group, argued that many of Federated’s regional department stores have already lost much of their individual personalities after years of answering to a corporate parent, making the name changeover more of a formality.
“Was Burdines so different from a Macy’s? No, not anymore,” he said.
The name changes also left some reminiscing about the days when going to a department store was an event. Louetta Payne, 70, remembered dressing up for a trip to her local Rich’s, and spending the better part of a day there.
“Those days will never come back, and I’m not saying they’re better than now,” she said as she browsed a clearance rack at a Lazarus-Macy’s outside of Columbus, Ohio. “It’s just that there was a pride to it. What you bought there was unique.”
Other customers at the Columbus store weren’t as nostalgic.
“What’s in a name?” asked Eric Stauffer, a computer technician for J.P. Morgan Chase & Co., which planted its logo on Bank One branches when it bought out that company last year.
“I mean, growing up, I remember going to Lazarus as a kid, but other than that, it’s a clothes store,” Stauffer said.
