Dear colleagues,
I hope you enjoyed our companywide Holiday Kickoff meeting last week and are feeling energized about the great work happening around the organization as we head into this important season. If you missed it, you can view the replay here.
Now, let’s talk specifically about Thanksgiving – which will look different for us this year.
For nearly 100 years, the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade has been the official start of the holiday season. Today, we announced our plans for a ‘reimagined’ Parade.
We’ve partnered with the City of New York to create a safe plan that will keep the tradition alive. For the first time, the Parade will be produced solely as a television event allowing millions of New Yorkers and the nation to safely experience it from the comforts of home. But even in this new format, the Parade will still showcase our signature mix of giant character helium balloons, fantastic floats, street performers, clowns, and of course, Santa Claus. There will be special moments throughout the celebration where our colleagues and volunteers will be featured. More details will be shared soon. While it will certainly look different in execution, this year’s Parade celebration will once again bring joy into the hearts of millions across the nation. Thank you to all of the teams for your hard work in getting these plans underway.
We have also made the important decision to close our stores to in-store shopping on Thanksgiving Day this year. We are working through the details of hours and fulfillment options now. That information will be shared with the stores team as plans are finalized.
We know that many of our customer’s enjoy visiting their local Macy’s store on Thanksgiving evening. This year, we will encourage customers to shop with us on macys.com and through the Macy’s mobile app where they will find all of our Black Friday deals. And to help our customers get a head start on holiday shopping and spread joy this holiday season, we will be unveiling big holiday deals earlier than ever.
On November 27, our stores will be open to our customers who shop in-store as well as use our expanded fulfillment options including contactless curbside pick-up, buy online pick-up in store and same day delivery.
The health and safety of our customers and colleagues remain our top priority, especially in these high-traffic moments. We will continue with our enhanced health and safety standards including additional cleaning in each store during open hours, occupancy checks to anticipate and mitigate crowds, sanitation stations throughout our stores, company issued protective wear for our store colleagues, and extended store hours.
The work that our stores teams did to support .com fulfillment was a key contributor to our success in Holiday 2019 and it will continue to be important this year. Throughout the holiday season, we will be leaning heavily on our .com, support and fulfillment teams, and anticipate curbside pickup being more popular than ever. I know it will be a very busy time and I thank you in advance.
As we always say, the holidays are when Macy’s shines the brightest. And even in this unprecedented time, we will continue to do just that.
With respect,