Macy's to Close Stores, Cut Jobs Following Poor Holiday Sales
Macy's is kicking off 2017 with some bad news. The department store's stock tumbled more than 9 percent on Wednesday after it posted disappointing holiday sales and announced 68 of the 100 stores it plans to close as part of its turnaround effort. CNBC reports outgoing Chairman and CEO Terry Lundgren said the company expects "our 2017 change in comparable sales to be relatively consistent with our November/December sales trend." Macy's also announced that its workforce will be cut by 6,200, with another 3,900 workers displaced by the store closures. Some of those workers will be reassigned.
Total Retail's Take: Certainly not the way Macy's had hoped to kick off 2017. The store closings are in part due to the company's promise back in August to close down unprofitable locations in order to focus on top-performing brick-and-mortar locations as well as to amp up e-commerce efforts. The store closures and job cuts will save Macy's an estimated $550 million a year starting in 2017, allowing it to invest more heavily into digital efforts and its Backstage off-price stores.
