Macy’s Inc. plans to close 125 department stores over the next three years, an admission that a fifth of its locations cannot thrive as shoppers buy more online and make fewer trips to malls, the Wall Street Journal reported. The company is also cutting roughly 2,000 corporate jobs, or 10 percent of corporate and support staff, and closing several offices. It will abandon a dual headquarters in Cincinnati — a structure Macy’s has kept since 1994 when it was still one of the country’s biggest retailers — and put all headquarters roles in New York. Macy’s, which will keep running about 400 of its namesake stores, is ramping up its restructuring efforts after a yearslong slump. Cobbled together from various regional chains, the company has struggled even as it left the weakest malls and boosted spending on e-commerce. Once the backbone of America’s shopping malls, department-store chains like Macy’s, J.C. Penney and Sears have been losing customers to the convenience of Amazon.com Inc. and the discounts found at off-price chains like T.J. Maxx. Read more. (Subscription required.)
Occupancy issues are at the heart of many significant retail cases, as detailed in the ABI publication Retail and Office Bankruptcy: Landlord/Tenant Rights, available at the ABI Store.
