Rank the Department Stores

[Markxxx]

I was reading the Wikipedia and they specifically I was reading a blip about department stores

And I was surprised to read that they were considering Lord & Taylors in the same class as Saks and Barneys. I've only been in two Lord & Taylor stores and I thought they were about on par with Marshall Fields or even below

So I thought it'd be interesting to ask, how would you rate the department stores.

I'd do it somthing like this

High End

• Saks
• Barney's
• Nieman Marcus
• Bergdorfs
• Bloomingdales

Upscale

• Marshall Fields
• Macys
• Nordstroms
• Burdines
• May Company
• Nordstroms
• Hudson's
• Dayton's
• Gimbles

Midline

• Sears
• JC Penny
• Wards
• Carsons
• Wieboldts
• L. S. Ayres

Lower

• Korvettes
• Goldblatts

Discount

• K-Mart
• Walmart
• Target
• Woolco
• WT Grant
• Zayre
• Venture
• Ames
• Kohls

Feel free to dispute my list and add other stores to your lists. I also included department stores that are now defunct.

So additions? Subtractions? Errors?

[Sigmagirl]

You said Nordstroms twice. You must really like Nordstroms.

I think Kohl's is easily as nice as Sears and Penney's. I have never seen a Korvettes or a
Goldblatts, but if they are nicer than Wal-Mart, I would move Target out of "Discount" and into that category. Target is better than Zayre and Ames.

[Shagnasty]

The TJX family of companies including TJ MAX, Homegoods, Marshalls and others are unusual. They are huge (I used to work at their headquarters) but they specialize in discount retailing for a lot of upscale merchandise. They sometimes blend their different companies together in a department store fashion. Their stores aren't all hoity toity but they certainly aren't thrift stores either. They sell top designer labels. I am not sure where you would put them.

[Voyager]

What an antiquated list! (As antiquated as me.) I used to go to Korvettes all the time, when I was in high school, and back then I'd have put it up with Sears. It must be dead for 30 years now. Gimbels is long gone too, as is Wards.

Lord and Taylors is in New York just down the street from Saks, and I don't think they were considered to be all that different.

[wolfman]

You forgot

Super-ultra cool
Meijer

[zweisamkeit]

Lord & Taylor's is not as upscale as Saks but is definitely higher than Macy's. And that definitely is an antiquated list!

Here are the (past and present) department stores that I remember/know (with rough "highest to lowest" in the rankings from top to bottom:

High End:
Saks
Nieman Marcus

RIGHT between high end and upscale:
Nordstrom's
Lord & Taylor's


Upscale:
Hudson's
Marshall Field's


Between Upscale and Midline:
Macy's

Midline:
JC Penney's
Kohl's
Sears

Discount:
Target
Meijer's
Walmart
Kmart (tied with Walmart)

* - I was around but wee when Ward's was around so I don't really remember it, other than having to wait around while my mom did boring shopping.

** An outlier for me is Parisian. It's a very odd store because it will have things like mudd shoes (found at Penney's) and then have designer jeans or nice cashmere sweaters. It's kind of a mix of midline and upscale all at once.

[zweisamkeit]

And on a separate but related note:

Hudson's was a Detroit department store that was sold to Marshall Fields in the late 90s. Then Marshall Fields was bought by Macy's.

I'm not the only one in the Detroit area who really feels that Macy's is a gigantic step down in quality from Hudson's. It's also not as nice as Marshall Fields, but MF (heh) wasn't as good as Hudson's.

I remember that getting something at Hudson's really meant you got something nice. There was a dining room with plates and silverware with sit down meals (even in the mall stores, not just the main one downtown), the prices were most definitely higher than Sears, Kohl's or Penney's and the quality was nice.

Macy's just seems so much lower scale. I see (non-clearance) sale prices of dress shirts for $19.99. That's freaking Target prices, man.

I'm rather annoyed that we lost an amazing, Detroit-based department store to what eventually turned into cheapo Macy's.

[Claire Beauchamp]

Here's the thing:

Dept store companies have different levels of stores that they put in different markets. They are usually graded A, B, C, etc. So in one city Macy's might be head and shoulders above Belk's, while in another city it might be the opposite. So if you think a particular store is lower-end, it might not be in other locations.

[kunilou]

I used to work in department store advertising. Back then it was pretty easy to set up a high-end/low-end scale.

High-end stores had great bridal salons, fine jewelry, furs, fancy furniture departments, china and crystal, and Maytags instead of GE in their appliance departments. They also had tea rooms, beauty salons and elderly tailors who did alterations.

Today, of course, there are damn few stores that even have appliance or furniture departments, bridal salons or fine jewelry, and the tailors who do more than hem a pair of pants are dying off quickly.

It's gotten to the point where the ladies who lunch around here believe Macy's is a giant step down from freakin' Famous-Barr -- which was where you went to get your kid's first suit and your everyday china.

[Sleeps With Butterflies]

Originally Posted by zweisamkeit

Lord & Taylor's is not as upscale as Saks but is definitely higher than Macy's. And that definitely is an antiquated list!

Here are the (past and present) department stores that I remember/know (with rough "highest to lowest" in the rankings from top to bottom:

High End:
Saks
Nieman Marcus

RIGHT between high end and upscale:
Nordstrom's
Lord & Taylor's


Upscale:
Hudson's
Marshall Field's


Between Upscale and Midline:
Macy's

Midline:
JC Penney's
Kohl's
Sears

Discount:
Target
Meijer's
Walmart
Kmart (tied with Walmart)

* - I was around but wee when Ward's was around so I don't really remember it, other than having to wait around while my mom did boring shopping.

** An outlier for me is Parisian. It's a very odd store because it will have things like mudd shoes (found at Penney's) and then have designer jeans or nice cashmere sweaters. It's kind of a mix of midline and upscale all at once.

This looks about right to me.

[Thudlow Boink]

Originally Posted by Voyager

What an antiquated list! (As antiquated as me.)

Yeah, I vaguely remember there being a Goldblatt's in town when I was a kid, but it's long gone by now. So are Woolco, Zayre, Ward's, and Venture (and maybe Ames), and there's now a ShopKo where at least one of those used to be, so I'd add it and Meijer to the Discount list. And yes, I think Kohl's is in the same class as Penney's.

Since I'm a thrifty person of modest means and needs cheapskate, I mainly shop the "discount" category. I'll occasionally shop at K-Mart, Wal-mart, Target, Shopko, and Meijer's (when I don't just do my shopping online), and I'd be hard-put to rank them—often location has as much as anything to do with where I'll check first if I need something.

[pulykamell]

Wow. Zayre? Venture? Talk about old-school.

Anyway, I only know the discount ones well enough to rank, and for me, it'd be:

Target>Meijer>>>>>K-Mart>Walmart

Around here, at least, Walmart is a fucking zoo. The dirtiest, loudest, generally most obnoxious department store I have ever been in. On the other hand, the Walmarts I've been to in Arizona have been quite pleasant and well-kept, so it's probably just an bias against two stores in the Chicago area I've visited.

[Markxxx]

EJ Korvette was just too cool and it was similar to Goldblatts.

WT Grant was the first major scandal in accounting in the department store world. It was a pretty good alternate to K-Mart and Woolco, but if you get a chance read about WT Grant and how it fell apart, it gives you great insight to the industry.

Ward to me was virtually a clone of Sears.

While I was Googling around I found this site it's Groceteria (Dot) Com, it more about Grocers than Department Stores, but it'd be worth a look if you have had any interest in this topic

[Green Bean]

For the ones I'm familiar with, I'd say zweisamkeit's list is spot-on.

I might make a distinction between "better discount" and "discount," if that's not cutting it too fine. I think I'd put Target and probably Kohl's in "better discount" and Walmart and Kmart into shithole...I mean "discount."

[sharding]

I agree with zweisamkeit too. There's no way in the world I'd put Macy's in the same category as Nordstrom these days (and I've been in locations in several cities for both, so I've seen the variation). Lately, Macy's has started to feel almost like JC Penney's (including the higher end Macy's locations). Seems like they've gone downhill noticeably.

[Voyager]

Originally Posted by kunilou

High-end stores had great bridal salons, fine jewelry, furs, fancy furniture departments, china and crystal, and Maytags instead of GE in their appliance departments. They also had tea rooms, beauty salons and elderly tailors who did alterations.

Too true. Real high class stores also had good restaurants, like Wanamakers in Philly. They had book stores, good toy departments, lots of stuff. Macy's in New York had a magic shop which always had a guy there demonstrating trips.

When I was in Berlin last April we went to a high class department store, which took me back. They had all the things American stores used to have. I don't know if the stores in Paris still have restaurants like they did 13 years ago the last time I was there, but I bet they do.

Now you made me sad.