In Touch with Mrs. Macy

At R. H. Macy & Co., the world's largest department store, the executive floor has recently been as busy as an adjustment desk on the day after Christmas. Last week Macy's not only an nounced a 7% sales increase (to $623.5 million) and record profits for the fiscal year, but increased its dividend and proposed a two-for-one stock split (its first). Then, after weeks of frantic preparation, Macy's opened its newest store, an $11 million building in New Haven. It was the second such opening this year, and it brings the total of Macy's stores to 48, which stretch from its famous home on Manhattan's Herald Square to branches as far south as Sea Island, Ga., and as far west as San Francisco.

Back to Downtown. Macy's expansion, which has doubled its stores and sales in ten years, is far from over. Within the next four years ten more stores will be added in such places as Topeka, Kans., Stockton, Calif., Livingston, N.J., and Queens, N.Y., where Macy's is building a circular store with parking ramps along the outside. More significantly, the firm is again moving into downtown areas (for example, in New Haven and Sacramento), a locale that Macy's and other retailers downgraded in the postwar rush to build branches in the suburbs.

Once a store is built, Macy's gears its merchandising to the income and taste of a mythical shopper whom Chairman Jack I. Straus, 64, refers to as "Mrs. Macy." Like everything else about retailing, Mrs. Macy has changed. Her middle-class income has risen to $6,500, but there are a lot of $20,000 families among Macy's customers too--and almost everyone seems to be trading up. Women shoppers can still find $2.99 house dresses on Macy's racks, but not far away are line-for-line copies of Paris haute couture and originals by young European designers. Mrs. Macy likes foreign merchandise in general: sales of imported goods are up 30%. This month, Macy's will introduce'a new line of Mies van der Rohe furniture, the first time it has been available in stores.

In 42 Languages. The firm is unconcerned if discounters ogle Mrs. Macy: it generally meets their prices on hard goods, including appliances. Though Macy's still pushes its own brands at roughly 10% less than major national brands, it also stocks more national brands. Macy's keeps customers loyal by recognizing a trend toward more spending on services and offering services that discounters lack. It has a theater-ticket agency, a travel service and a currency-exchange post for foreign travelers, also offers all kinds of custom services: Macy's will remodel houses, restring tennis rackets, make up hooked rugs to size, and turn out bowling balls to order.

Along with expanded stores, increased services, and training courses to make its 30,000 employees more helpful and friendly (Herald Square has sales clerks who sell in 42 languages). Chairman Straus is also concentrating on eliminating Mrs. Macy's most oft-voiced complaint: not getting ordered merchandise because of faulty addresses or overenthusiastic promises of early delivery. Charge cards, which Macy's adopted only five years ago, have helped correct the first cause. To cure the second, Macy's now drills its salespeople to be realistic with customers as well as friendly.

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