Anybody have any insight on what the company is trying to accomplish by cramming heavy markdowns in Q4 instead of taking them during Q3 to clear old merchandise for new goods? Floors and Stockrooms are packed at my store. I think what they are doing is crazy. I’m sure they didn’t want to report heavy markdowns in Q3 Quarter Earnings and avoid the hit on profit, but I feel like there is more to the story. And minimal Penny pull?? Stores are drowning in stock. I have 3rd marks from last Feb that still haven’t gone to penny! I don’t get it.
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I spoke to a friend yesterday evening who is still with the company. Just to hear the angst and stress in her voice was alarming in itself. I am unsure how Macys expects its teams in store to accomplish this workload. Then you have the Store Manager and Regional teams along with a DVP as well, sounding desperate and blaming YOU if you are not getting this workload done. Such a negative atmosphere in stores. Even worse if your store leader likes to play the blame game and point a finger at you for ALL the store problems like you are not doing your job. I have never seen anything like this in my entire professional career. It only cements my I made the right decision by leaving.
Our DVPs and Regional Ops are on us like white on rice to get these ridiculous markdowns completed. The company may not care, but they certainly do. Obviously, it’s the economy and being competitive and “preparing for what’s coming” (although some might argue that we’re already in a recession) but this is clearly a knee jerk reaction and we’re late to the game with this pricing strategy, putting an obscene amount of strain on the stores in the midst of Holiday prep, one truck after the other, and then throw in ISM into the mix?? Especially at this point in the season, it’s bad all around. And just to look good on paper? A Store Manager once told me that PIP is just a number. If I am confident that I scanned, marked, moved and signed every item I physically could and my sell offs are decent, I’m going to be satisfied with that. I’m done stressing out over this. They frankly don’t pay us enough to absorb all of the worry on how to get all this done when we haven’t seen these kind of inventory levels in 3 years. These incompetent new hires in Central need to get their act together. And consider spending time in stores to see how their decisions are impacting the already unmanageable workload, not to mention the morale of already burned out store teams. rant complete
I am just laughing at the real reason nobody is mentioning even you know about it.
Economy economy and economy.
Company doesn’t care if you do your markdowns or not. They push it if you mark if good if not if it makes it to the floor still customer is getting the markdown price.
Now, about economy. Since the economy is not doing good. Company is going after the biggest markdowns because, they are preparing themselves for 2023 and 2024.
A lot of economists are saying recession in 2023. Which could be true or not but macys is saving themselves with markdowns and people would not spend a dime. So, in 2023 your sell through of markdowns is not good, please don’t be surprised and it’s not your fault.
Good luck
Markdown dollars for private brands come from Macys. National brands have an allowance for markdown dollars given to Macys. You're sitting on private brands that have an extremely high markup to compensate for that. You store it until it comes time to mark it down during the panic to buy a gift during Q4 so the ratio of markdowns to full-price units looks great on paper.
If your a red badge look at your division for markdowns. Your large stores have have 9000 units and the smaller locations averaging about 2000
On paper (what they are looking at) they don’t have a “to much stock problem”
The issue is balancing stock between stores. Go to a small macys they have 5 pieces on a 4 way and nothing in stockrooms
Go to a large volume door you can’t even shop a 4 way and the stockrooms are filled to the ceiling.
To the poster about the stock levels.
I am not here to defend the company or anyone. Senior executives are not going to stores.
They are just looking at numbers on a report
Go to a low volume store and then a bigger store.
Low volume stores have nothing and large volume are busting out the seams.
On a balance sheet they probably are in line.
They have a stock balancing issue amongst the stores
Former Red badge
After a decade I walked away. all the stores are toxic environments
I moved onto another company and haven’t felt this good in years
I highly recommend moving on with your life and career
I don’t understand our CFO and CEO going to the media and painting a different picture by saying that we are in such a great position from a stock perspective. So out of touch…what drives me nuts is that all of these people making all of these horrible decisions have never worked in a store or possibly ever set foot in one. They don’t understand the impact and don’t care. They get paid to answer emails and deliver bad news.
Macys realized they have over-bought in a huge way, and now their reacting! Feds started raising interest rates months ago, which in-turned slow consumer spending, and now Macys is choking on too much inventory. JG knew this was going to happen, but yet again, made another horrible decision and the employees will ultimately be the ones paying for it! “Get out, now”
welcome to the new macys.. sign up right here.. with your blood
There is a huge penny pull this week. It’s almost 3000 units in my store
These markdowns are crazy! We don't have enough staff in our store to even cover all the hours required for markdowns and merchandising. We couldn't even get half of them done this week, and now next week we have almost the same amount. We are drowning in our store, stock rooms are bursting, we're hanging stuff from the rafters and pipes, it's so bad.