My Macy’s Provides Recession Blueprint

Late last year, Macy’s consolidated its divisions and started tailoring in-store merchandising to the needs of different regions, an approach that it calls “My Macy’s.” It turns out that “My Macy’s” has been such a success that it is rolling out the effort across all of it’s stores. According to Karen Hoguet, Macy’s CFO:

For the spring season, the My Macy’s districts outperformed the remaining stores by 2.6 percentage points

My take: These results aren’t surprising. In a previous post, I gave ”My Macy’s” a thumbs-up for following a recession strategy that I called: simplify, target, and align. During a recession, companies have less opportunity for sloppiness so they need to more effectively align their offerings and efforts to the specific need of target customers. Since the needs of customers vary across regions, it makes sense to merchandise in different ways in different regions.

The bottom line: What’s your “My <Your Company>” strategy?