Macy’s is adding staff to its women’s shoes and handbags departments in an effort to improve sales.
On the company’s third quarter earnings conference call, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc. Tony Spring told analysts that the retailer has been testing this initiative at about 100 locations.
“Having dedicated runners to get shoes from the stock room and salespeople available to assist in handbags allows our colleagues to spend more time with the customer,” Spring noted. “Compared to ‘non-first’ 50 Macy’s locations and those that did not receive additional staffing, women’s shoes and handbag sales outperformed by roughly 600 and 700 basis points, respectively, year-over-year.” (Macy’s “First 50” locations are the priority.)
The CEO said that this program “illustrates the importance” of dedicated customer assistance in high touch point categories. “These learnings along with those from the First 50 are being used to inform our plans for expanding initiatives to additional go-forward locations in 2025, which will be discussed in more detail on the fourth quarter earnings call,” Spring added.
Along with this move, Spring said that the company has reduced exposure to “less relevant brands” and expanded its offering in ones that customers are responding to, including Donna Karan, Steve Madden and Dolce Vita.
When asked by an analyst if the bump in shoe sales also had anything to do with Macy’s updates in merchandise assortment, Spring noted that the changes have been predominantly about people.
“We’re certainly making changes to assortments,” Spring said. “We are reducing the duplication within stores to try to make shopping easier for the consumer. But the lion’s share of the impact that we’re seeing is by having somebody to run to get the bag and get shoes from to the floor and to unlock the handbags that are not easily accessible by the customer. And so I think that’s given us some cautious optimism that there is more that we can do as we are able to actually impact more of the menu inclusive of the assortment in those stores.”
This comes as Macy’s reported declines in its top and bottom lines for the third quarter on Wednesday.
The department store chain said that net income declined to $28 million in Q3 from $41 million in the year ago period. Operating income slipped 1.3 percent to $64 million from $83 million in the year-ago period.
Net sales decreased 2.4 percent to $4.7 billion in the third quarter, with comparable sales down 2.4 percent on an owned basis and down 1.3 percent on an owned-plus-licensed-plus-marketplace basis.
On the positive side, Macy’s “First 50” locations, where the company is investing in several areas of the stores, saw comparable sales rise 1.9 percent, marking the third consecutive quarter of comparable sales growth. Bloomingdale’s saw comparable sales growth of owned and owned-plus-licensed-plus-marketplace of 1 percent and 3.2 percent, respectively. Bluemercury reported comparable sales growth of 3.3 percent.
