Worst Retailer of the Year
Winner: Macy’s
This award wasn’t even close. Macy’s wins this award in a landslide.
As documented, Macy’s outlined growth strategies are as outdated as department stores themselves. Wall Street appears to agree. Macy’s stock is down over 40% year-to-date, according to MarketWatch.
All Macy’s strategies smell of wanton incrementalism, do nothing to stem the systemic issues that plague malls and department stores, and even ideas that could have been cool, like Story, for example, ended up so watered down and so poorly executed in 2019 that even Ron Johnson probably tells his friends at c—tail parties, “Hey, at least I didn’t try to do that at JC Penney.”
This picture of Story this past summer alone says it all: