Assignment task:
Macy's Grand Strategy Respond to discussion: There was a general decline for all retail stores when the pandemic hit. The brick-and-mortar retail stores across the U.S. have all seen declines after store closures and are still recovering. Macy's introduced their Polaris Strategy in early 2020 with their decision to close stores as a way of cutting costs and increasing savings. Their strategy for the past few years was stated as stabilizing profitability. Part of Macy's strategy included strengthening customer relationships, curating quality fashion, accelerating digital growth, optimizing store portfolios, and resetting the cost base (Jackson, 2023). There are several factors why Macy's needed to close many stores including supply chain disruptions, rise in e-commerce shopping, changes in leadership/management, and consumer spending behavior. I believe their strategies appeared to be failing the past few years mainly because of the pandemic and shift in consumer spending behaviors. Trends in clothing and fashion changed too fast and many retailers could not keep up with the changes and ended up with excess inventory. The competition is high within the department store retail industry so many companies have to differentiate themselves to remain relevant with trends and adapt new strategies to attract customers. Due to the high competitiveness of retail companies, some companies may have overstretched themselves by investing in things that had little return. According to Lee (2022), Macy invested in technology by adding over 14,000 in-store price scanners and line-busting software technology that alerts staff when they are busy. Macy also claims to modernize their supply chain by implementing new central fulfillment models, investing in embedding technology, data analytics, machine learning, and developing better forecasting models. These efforts have improved their inventory management with inventories down at the end of 2022 by 3% versus 2021, and down 18% versus 2019 ("Macy's Annual Report 2022", n.d.). Investing in technology that improves the supply chain may make the company's supply chain more resilient. Improving the company's inventory management could save money in the long term. I believe what led to the closing of stores may have been Macy's overstretching on their expansions and investments while having a more diversified strategy prior to 2020. However, I believe Macy's currently has more of a revised turn-around strategy.