Macy's, Inc.

Macy's, Inc. is the New York-based department-store company behind Macy's, Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury, trading on the New York Stock Exchange under the symbol M. The Macy's nameplate dates to Rowland Hussey Macy's 1858 New York store and its Herald Square flagship; the listed company descends from Federated Department Stores, which bought Macy's in 1994, absorbed the May Company in 2005 and renamed itself Macy's, Inc. in 2007. Its current strategy concentrates the business on its stronger stores and its growing luxury nameplates.

Company Profile

The February 2019 summary in the record describes the Macy's brand itself: fashion and affordable luxury at approximately 650 locations in 44 states, the District of Columbia, Puerto Rico and Guam, plus online sales to more than 100 international destinations through macys.com. The October 2013 summary records the two-brand structure of that era — Macy's and Bloomingdale's selling apparel, accessories, cosmetics and home furnishings across 45 states.

A separate profile in this section covers Federated Department Stores, this company's former name, and its stock record belongs to the same continuing listing: Federated's ticker history and Macy's, Inc.'s are one line, renamed in 2007 when the company took the name of its most famous store. Read together, the two pages give the full arc from the 1929 department-store combination to today's smaller, luxury-weighted group.

The range behind the name is fashion apparel, accessories, cosmetics, home furnishings and other consumer goods under Macy's and Bloomingdale's. Its customers are department-store shoppers across the United States, in stores and online. That combination — what is sold, and to whom — is the simplest way to place Macy's, Inc. in the industry: it explains the company's costs, its competitors and the kind of news that moved its shares when it had them. A change in either half of the combination, a new product category or a new customer, is usually the first sign that the business described in the older summaries is turning into something different.

Scale should be read from the dated summaries with their dates attached. Store counts, sales descriptions and market positions quoted there were the company's own account of itself in that year, and they are the right basis for comparing Macy's, Inc. with the other companies in this section — a component supplier against a retailer, or a catalogue house against a mall chain — as long as each figure is compared with figures from roughly the same period.

For current dealings, the snapshot at the top of this page is the place to start: it gives the company's present status — Operating — executing a multi-year plan to close about 150 underproductive Macy's stores while investing in its remaining stores, Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury — and links to the official website, which is where current product ranges, store information and investor or corporate contacts are maintained. Anything in the dated summaries that conflicts with the snapshot should be read as the older position: summaries describe the year they are dated, and the snapshot describes the company as it stands now.

For anyone researching the fashion industry's public-company era, Macy's, Inc. is a useful case: a 1929 combination that took the name of its most famous store and then shrank back toward it. The summaries in this section were compiled while the story was still unfolding, which is exactly what makes them worth keeping — they preserve what the company said about itself at the time, before the outcome was known.