Macy's to renovate its New York flagship

Macy’s to ren­o­vate its New York flagship

ANNE D’INNOCENZIO,AP Retail Writer

NEW YORK (AP) — Macy’s iconic flag­ship store, which is already the world’s largest, is about to get even bigger.

The depart­ment store chain announced Tues­day that it plans to spend about $400 mil­lion over the next four years to expand and over­haul its sto­ried flag­ship loca­tion at Her­ald Square in Man­hat­tan. The makeover will affect every floor and vir­tu­ally every depart­ment from shoes to lux­ury goods. The facelift comes as depart­ment stores are fig­ur­ing out new ways to excite con­sumers in an era when shop­pers are shift­ing toward the Web and using the lat­est tech­nol­ogy to search and buy merchandise..

The ren­o­va­tions will begin in early spring 2012 and con­tinue in phases through the fall of 2015. Macy’s will add about 100,000 square feet of sell­ing space for a total of 1.2 mil­lion square feet by open­ing up space cur­rently used for stock and offices. The store’s cur­rent total space is 2.2 mil­lion square feet.

“The excite­ment, size and scale of this remodel rein­forces our con­vic­tion that Macy’s Her­ald Square is and will remain a retail store in a class by itself,” Terry J. Lund­gren, Macy’s chair­man, pres­i­dent and CEO, said in a state­ment. “It is our company’s most pro­duc­tive store, and expe­ri­ence shows that improve­ments in this loca­tion con­sis­tently result in higher cus­tomer traf­fic and sales volume.”

More than 20 mil­lion peo­ple visit Macy’s flag­ship every year, mak­ing it a top tourist des­ti­na­tion, and Lund­gren said he wants to make an even more pow­er­ful impres­sion. He told reporters that Macy’s had done a lot of research and was inspired by Har­rods and Sel­f­ridges in Lon­don as well as other stores in Japan and France.

“This is a smart move at the right time,” said Faith Con­solo, chair­man of retail leas­ing and mar­ket­ing at Pru­den­tial Dou­glas Elli­man. They’re going to up the image. They want to be Har­rods of the U.S.”

As part of the ren­o­va­tions, Macy’s will cre­ate the world’s largest shoe depart­ment, fea­tur­ing as many as 300,000 pairs of shoes on any one day, and infuse tech­nol­ogy into the shop­ping expe­ri­ence rang­ing from inter­ac­tive store direc­to­ries to a new mobile app to guide cus­tomers as they shop. The flag­ship store will also have a new hall of lux­ury brands that will include a series of two and three-level designer shops. Louis Vuit­ton, for exam­ple, will be enlarged to mul­ti­ple floors. The store will also have 22 restau­rants and food­ser­vice sta­tions with seat­ing for about 1,000 cus­tomers, an increase of 40 per­cent. The ros­ter includes a new restau­rant on the sixth floor with views of the Empire State Building.

One of the key strate­gies is bet­ter serv­ing the “Mil­len­ni­als,” who range in age from 13 to 30. Lund­gren told reporters that Macy’s “must pay atten­tion” to this fast-growing group. As part of that cam­paign, Macy’s will relo­cate depart­ments focus­ing on the under-25 age group to the lower level, which will have a nail bar and salon and offer the lat­est tech­nol­ogy and ser­vices that appeal to young shop­pers. It will also have a pub.

The makeover will include restor­ing the store’s exte­rior to re-capture its orig­i­nal grandeur and to fully cap­i­tal­ize on foot traf­fic along the famous shop­ping cor­ri­dor. Win­dows along Broad­way, 34th Street and Sev­enth Avenue — which have been cov­ered up over the years — will be reopened. Win­dows on the upper floors also will be uncov­ered to allow more nat­ural light into the build­ing. Side­walks will be replaced, with Macy’s branded paved “wel­come mats’ added at every entrance.

The ren­o­va­tions, the most dra­matic since the 1970s, come as Macy’s has been out­per­form­ing peers like J.C. Pen­ney. Its strat­egy for tai­lor­ing mer­chan­dise to local mar­kets has helped it to over­come the over­all slug­gish­ness of the econ­omy. The com­pany fin­ished what it called its most suc­cess­ful sec­ond quar­ter and spring sea­son in more than a decade.

That streak has con­tin­ued into the fall. After a suc­cess­ful back-to-school sea­son, Macy’s said last month that it expects third-quarter rev­enue growth in stores open at least one year to be at the high end of its pre­vi­ous guid­ance of 4 per­cent to 4.5 per­cent. Macy’s, along with other major retail­ers, is expected to report sales fig­ures Thurs­day for Octo­ber, the last month of its fis­cal quarter.

“We feel good about our own busi­ness,” Lund­gren said.” We have lots of confidence.”

Macy’s said the flag­ship store will con­tinue to oper­ate dur­ing the con­struc­tion. By fall 2015, the com­pany says it plans to add about 800 new posi­tions to the store’s exist­ing year-round work­force of about 4,600 people.

The first por­tion of Macy’s Her­ald Square store was opened in 1902. It was expanded in three addi­tional phases to its cur­rent con­fig­u­ra­tion by 1931.

Macy’s Inc. oper­ates more than 800 stores under its name­sake brand and 41 Bloomingdale’s locations.

Posted by AP News on Nov 1 2011. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS Feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.