A few years ago, Macy’s announced an investment in 50 key stores across the United States called “Growth50.” The program envisioned a $200-million commitment to upgrade 50 key U.S. stores in order to create a more vibrant customer shopping experience. Among other things, the Growth50 stores benefitted from upgraded lighting and flooring, renovated fitting rooms and restrooms, new or expanded mattress or furniture departments, new product assortments unique to each location’s demographics, new food and beverage options, increased staffing levels, and new services like ‘My Stylist’ (a complementary personal shopping service), ‘At Your Service’ (a dedicated location for online purchase pick-ups and returns) and ‘Scan and Pay’ (a feature on the mobile app that allows users to process their own purchases).
This investment is yielding results. The Growth50 stores have been delivering solid results. As Macy’s CEO mentioned, the Growth50 stores have “significantly outperformed the rest of the fleet with notably higher customer retention rates and better overall customer satisfaction.” Based on the success of Growth50, the plan is to now roll it out to an additional 100 stores, increasing the tally to 150 stores (now referred to as “Growth150”).
Regarding the initial Growth50 stores, the most interesting observation is that Macy’s chose to invest in stores located predominantly in Class A malls. In fact, more than 70% of the Growth50 stores are in malls owned by publicly listed A-mall REITs, namely Macerich, Simon Property Group, Taubman Centers, Brookfield Property (BPR) and Unibail-Rodamco-Westfield.