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| Image courtesy macys.com |
On this day, in 1858, the very first RH Macy and Co.
store opened in New York City. Rowland Hussey Macy was born on the island
of Nantucket in Massachusetts on August 30, 1822. At the ripe old age of
fifteen, he took a job on a whaling ship (not an uncommon thing for the young
men of the area). During his time at sea, Rowland did what many a sailor has
done: he got a tattoo. While some get the name of their sweetheart (or their
ship or their mom, depending on their temperament) plastered across a bicep, he
choose, for reasons we will never know, a red star placing it either on his
hand or his forearm (sources can't seem to agree on this detail and while
photographs existed during the latter part of Rowland's life, there is no
visual evidence of it preserved for posterity). Anyone familiar with the logo
of the chain of stores named after him will immediately recognize the
significance of that tattoo.
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| Image courtesy findagrave.com |
Rowland quickly decided that a life at sea wasn't his cup of
tea. By the age of eighteen, he'd made his way out to California with his
brother Charles. The gold rush was just hitting its peak when the Macy Brothers
decided to open a dry goods store in Marysville, the self proclaimed Gateway to
the Gold Fields. Unfortunately, the cash flow of miners proved to be too
erratic for them and the store folded. Charles stayed in California, while
Rowland moved back east. In 1851, he opened another dry goods store in
Haverville, Massachusetts hoping to service the woolen mill workers there. That
store also failed. Rowland opened two other dry goods stores that would go
bankrupt. The good news is that all that failure wasn't going to waste. Rowland
was learning how to successfully run a business along the way and by 1858 was
primed to actually make a go of one.
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| Image courtesy ephemeralnewyork.wordpress.com |
This time, Rowland moved to New York City. He set up his new
shop on the corner of 6th Avenue and 14th Street. It was an area pretty far
north of any other dry goods store and the relative isolation worked in his
favor. That first day of business might not have seemed terribly auspicious (he
made only $11.08 worth of sales, about $350 today) but it was the beginning of
something big. As business expanded, Rowland began taking over the neighboring
buildings, incorporating them into his store and adding all sorts of different
goods. Each time he added a new department, he saw a significant bump in sales,
which in turn fueled the need for more space and more items for sale. It was a
vicious circle with a byproduct of wonderful profits.
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| Image courtesy gjenvick.com |
Rowland's success continued throughout the 1860s and 70s,
when, in 1875, he brought two family members in as partners. With the addition
of his nephew, Robert Valentine, and his cousin's husband, Abiel La Forge,
Rowland was able to relax from the rigors of running a business. He didn't
actually get to enjoy that relaxation for long, though. He passed away from
inflammatory kidney disease while on a trip to Paris, France in March 1877. His
new partners didn't get to enjoy their involvement with the company for long
either. Abiel died in 1878 and Robert passed in 1879. The store did stay in the
hands of the Macy family for another 16 years before being bought out by Isidor
and Nathan Straus, who had apparently made good money as licensed third party
china sellers in the store for several years.
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| Image courtesy nytimes.com |
At the turn of the twentieth century, the Straus Brothers
made a momentous decision for their successful retail venture: they decided to
move. Closing the store at 14th Street, they moved even further
north to 34th Street , building a new structure on Harold Square.
Opening in 1902, the flagship Macy’s would eventually occupy almost an entire
block of prime New York real estate. Still in operation today, the Broadway
store boasts over 1.2 million square feet of retail space (with an additional
1.2 million square feet of other space) and is estimated to be worth $3.3
Billion empty. It doesn’t really matter what kind of price tag you put on it,
though. The building was declared a National Historic Landmark in 1978, which
of course, makes it priceless.
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| Image courtesy vistmacysusa.com |
Since the early 1900s, Macy’s has been through plenty of ups
and downs while simultaneously imbedding itself in the national conscience. The
famous Thanksgiving Day Parade started in 1924 and has been delighting visitors
to New York ever since. I’ve been fortunate enough to see it in person once and
while it’s always fun to watch on television, it’s pretty spectacular to be
there. The store also became famous for attracting customers during the
Christmas season with lavish window displays along Broadway and an in-store
Santa. The latter practice was immortalized in the 1947 movie Miracle on 34th Street. Not
all of the publicity that Macy’s has gathered over the years has been positive,
however. In 2005 they settled a lawsuit over their security practices when combatting
shoplifters. The New York State Attorney General’s Office found that they had
violated numerous laws by operating private jails and liberally using handcuffs
when dealing with suspected thieves.
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| Image courtesy todayshow.com |
Fiscally, Macy’s has ridden the rollercoaster of bust and
boom that has plagued the retail industry somewhat better than most. Somewhat
better because while the name still exists, the company itself is nothing like
Rowland or the Straus Brothers ever imagined. Macy’s began expanding its
presence across the country by buying up smaller regional chains in 1924. This
strategy worked fairly well until 1983 when the company lost a bid to buy
Federated Department Stores. That loss signaled a shift in Macy’s fortunes. In
1992, Macy’s filed for bankruptcy, narrowly surviving the restructuring
process. Two years later, Macy’s and Federated did merge into one entity but at
a cost. Federated was now in charge of things, moving the company’s
headquarters from New York to Cincinnati, Ohio. The only upshot was that
Federated decided that the name Macy’s was more valuable than any other in
their portfolio and most of the stores they own have been rebranded under the
sign of the red star.
Today, Macy’s is America’s largest department store chain
and was last seen at slot 118 on the Fortune 500 list (both of those rankings
are based on sales). With over 580 stores, more than 130,000 employees
worldwide and more than $25.7 Billion in annual revenue, they’ve come a long
way since Rowland first unlocked the front doors 161 years ago.
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