Bad Example
Macy's Fall Doesn't Dictate Retail's Future
Department stores are dying, but slowly, and sales overall keep growing.
This article is for subscribers only.
Thank goodness the fates of retail and the U.S. economy are not tied to the darkening future of department stores.
Macy's Inc. shares tumbled Thursday after the department-store chain reported sales had fallen in the first quarter from a year earlier, the ninth such quarterly decline in a row. What's worse, the sales drop followed a 6.1 percent decline in the same quarter a year earlier. And instead of concrete plans for fixing Macy's problems, new CEO Jeff Gennette offered trite one-liners about growing e-commerce and "stabilizing" the brick-and-mortar business.