Investors should stop buying what Macy's is selling

Macy's yesterday debuted its new On 34th private label women's apparel and accessories line. The collection features a range of "wardrobe staples" with "enough wow to inspire women to escape the ordinary and run their world." What?

Let's talk about overpromising and under-delivering because that's what Macy's is doing here (no one needs to even look at the On 34th line to know that). It is also what it has been doing for years about its various strategic and tactical plans to become more relevant in a retailing vertical (department stores) that is frequently an afterthought, if any thought at all, when consumers are deciding where to shop.

Macy's, to be clear, is not alone among retailers in engaging in hyperbole to sell products to consumers or its corporate initiatives to investors and other stakeholders. it does have a consistent record, however, of going public with grand plans like its three-year Polaris strategy that was announced by former CEO Jeff Gennette in 2020.

The department store retailer's problems are not with its plans. Most of those including its private brand development, store-within-a-store concepts, smaller out-of-mall stores, increased personalization focus, curated online marketplace approach, expanded omnichannel capabilities, fiscal management and other steps have helped to improve results in varying degrees.

I will also admit that I very much want Macy's to grow up to be the retailer that the company's executives have been promising for many years. I'd shop in that store a lot more than I do now.

Macy's problem it seems from my outside vantage point is really quite simple. It's leaders talk and its stores don't walk. That can't be blamed in any significant way on store management.

It comes from its top leaders who would be well served it they made a lot more unnannounced visits to its stores, particularly non-flagship locations. If they do they will find what shoppers do - a mess. The type of mess that resembles my room as a teenager when my mother walked in and asked if a tornado had touched down. I learned how to do remedy the issue to my benefit. Macy's should do it also. Clean up your mess!