They always had. It’s been so long that it’s out of peoples’ memories, but Macy’s once competed on price, especially with Gimbel’s. They both claimed to have the lowest prices and had perpetual price wars, with spies going into each other’s stores and making comparisons.
The difference between then and today is mostly that department stores could afford to have several levels of price and quality in the same store. Here’s an anecdote from Margaret Case Harriman’s And the Price Is Right: The R. H. Macy Story.
Yes, clerks had to show you the goods. You couldn’t browse. Imagine that working today.
In addition, the Macy’s flagship store had some very high end departments that competed with upscale New York stores as well as a bargain basement.
We’ve forgotten bargain basements today, when Filene’s Basement is the last remaining, but they accounted for up to 30% of the business of major department stores. Sort of a dirty little secret. The only time I ever got to shop in Sibley’s, the very upscale department store in Rochester, was when my mother went to the basement to look through the cheap stuff piled on tables.
The huge downtown department stores were visual treats in many ways, but the reality was that they were mostly show, tricked out-amusement parks whose purpose was to lure people in who couldn’t afford to buy the glitzy merchandise dangled in front of them. Remember that five and dimes thrived right alongside the department stores. (Rochester had five in one downtown block.)
If Macy’s really sold only the quality stuff that people remember it never would have stayed in business. It was a triumph of style over substance. They all were.
I don’t know that this is the case. Many people are busy professionals. Do they want to spend their time monitoring Macy’s sale fliers and picking through the sale racks hoping to find the item they want? Or do they want to go to the store, find the item they want, and leave?
I hate shopping. I would not look at the Macy’s flier week after week waiting for the item I want to be on sale. It’s worth it to me to walk into the store and buy a shirt at that moment even though it might be $20-30 less during a sale. That savings is not worth the hassle for me.
Having lots of sales allows Macy’s to attract both the customer who pays full price and the bargain hunter. I’m sure there are lots of people who do look at the fliers and come in specifically because of the sale.
Instead of bargain basements (and I remember shopping in them too) we have Big Lots and similar closeout stores. And instead of five and dimes, we have dollar stores. However, we don’t have the big displays in either of them.
Yeah… quite a while ago, I think. I’ve topped 40 and I don’t think I’ve seen an “urban shopping district with department store edifices” since before I sprouted hair in private places.
But there also is a certain percentage of customers (rich ones) where price doesn’t matter. They buy at the regular, full price. Often early, just as the new fashions come out.
In effect, they subsidize the rest of us who buy at sales prices. When they pay $80 for the sweater that cost Macy’s $20, then 3 more of those sweaters could be given away free and Macy’s would still break even.
But they aren’t free, some are sold at a “50% off sale” for $40, and some are sold at 70% off for $25, and a few go to the closeout rack at $15 or $20. So even when they have gone out of style and are on closeout, the store often breaks even on them. The few that are sold below cost have been covered by all the previous sales at higher prices.
(And, as Student Driver mentioned, the store also does well on sales of accessories or matching items, usually at full price.)
In the old days the 34th street store was far more diverse than it is today, and certainly more than a mall Macy’s. They had a good book department, a magic shop, a toy store, and food in the basement. (I don’t remember a bargain basement as of the '70s, but there might have been one earlier. An old gf used to work in the real Filene’s basement in Boston.) I don’t know of any American department store like that now, though they still exist in Europe. I visited one in Berlin, and it made me quite nostalgic.
Macy’s even today has a wider range than most places. I bought my last suit there, and good shirts, and I actually got upsold by an older woman who helped me pick out shirts to go with the suit. That’s a level of service I haven’t seen in years, and she definitely made her commission on me.
I wanted to buy a new coffeemaker, and I had a discount card - but it was no good, because the coffee maker was an excluded small electric. I did not buy it anyway, and went to a Sears down the corridor where I found the same thing for less than the sale price.
Some place, Kohl’s I think, started advertising that their discount coupons were actually good on everything. The Macy’s long list of exclusion in small print is a joke at our house, and I’ve seen many people caught by it.
Macys has a unique sales philosopy-they carry high-end brands (like Polo) which are not usually discounted. They also carry a huge amount of medium/low quality stuff, which is heavily discounted-hence the purpetual sales. They also FLOOD their stores with merchandise-it is sometimes impossible to walk around-because of the racks of stuff everywhere.
I prefer stores like Lord&Taylor, or Nordstrom-at least you can see where you are!
Perhaps, like other stores, they make more on their credit card business than on their clothing business. They could sell their clothing at cost (or below) if they could get people to borrow money to buy them.
I believe that Citigroup operates the credit card business for Macy’s so I doubt that it makes much, if anything for Macy. (Many retailers have sold their credit card businesses in recent years.)
The Macy’s in downtown Chicago, which I believe used to be Marshall Fields, is still an old-school department store, with restaurants, furniture floors, a bookstore, etc.
Actually, a garment that is listed as costing $20 costs more than that. $20 is how much the store paid for that garment, BEFORE shipping and handling, and before the paperwork and processing is done. So when that garment arrives at the store, it might already have cost the store $23 or 24 dollars, even before the labor of opening the box and processing the garment starts. We had to count the garments and see that the correct sizes were shipped, and then we had to put them on hangers, price them, steam them if necessary (some garments arrived in a very wrinkled condition), and then put them out on the racks. Even though it only takes a few minutes to do this, when you have a few hundred garments the labor costs are going to add up.