We’re all going to miss Macy’s someday. The retailing giant’s shares were getting pummeled Wednesday evening, down nearly 11% on dismal earnings announced after the close. It would appear that the company cannot shut down stores fast enough, or axe workers ruthlessly enough, to return to profitability. Sixty-three closures are planned for this spring, along with the elimination of 10,000 jobs. Anyone who has followed the glacially-slow-but-inevitable demise of Sears over the last 40 years will understand that there is a lot of ruin in a retail empire. But don’t expect the death of America’s remaining department store chains to take anywhere near that long. Sears did everything wrong, as anyone who has shopped there knows; Macy’s, on the other hand, has done everything right — alas, to no avail. It is predictable that within ten years Macy’s will have shrunk to just a handful of stores in the biggest cities. The name will surely live on, buttressed by online sales that have been the only bright spot for the company in recent years. In the meantime, perhaps Amazon will figure out a way to let customers feel ‘virtual cashmere’, apply ‘virtual lipstick’, smell ‘virtual perfume’, and to enhance the online shopping experience in sundry other ways that only a dwindling number of brick-and-mortar outlets can still provide. But I wouldn’t count on it. More likely is that department stores will become part of the nostalgic past, as difficult for future generations to conjure up and appreciate as the smell of a circus elephant, the sound of a steam locomotive, or the tickle of sand crabs squiggling in one’s hand.
