The company leadership has transitioned from Jeff to Tony. Tony's experience at Bloomingdale's brings a different perspective to the role previously held at Macy's. What are your thoughts on this change, and how you feel about Tony's ability to succeed?
12 replies (most recent on top)
Hoping some of the leaders will be let go once Tony realizes they add nothing, especially the Chief Stores Officer, MM. I used to look forward to central visits. Now when I find out he is coming to town, I try to plan an illness to avoid. He has zero charm in a job that needs to be all charm. It is like interacting with an AI robot.
Meeting some of the merchant leaders, it is no wonder that the clothing in stores looks as sad, boring or tacky as it does, they practically show up to visits in glorified gym clothes. I try to ask them about trends and newness and accessories and listening to their answers, it shows they have no clue and just repeat or talk about what they happen to be looking at or standing next to. Good luck Tony!
To follow up with the last two replies, I was going to watch the Springboard podcast on Insite. When I clicked it on, the first thing I saw was Tony and his son sitting there smiling at me and I couldn’t do it.
Don’t worry, his son will be joining the Board soon.
Here I was bringing my hopes up.. Another celebrity CEO who loves the camera. SpringBoard, really? lol
I don't expect anything different even with the new leadership. On 34th is a joke. We should have kept K Scott, Charter and Alfani and just updated the styles. Now we are getting rid of Calvin Klein Sportswear the only decent dressy vendor we have. The Karl Lagerfeld isn't as nice and is not for everyone. INC is well INC you either love it or hate it. Good Luck Tony and goodbye Jeff (I wish you had left sooner )
We need more customer service and store merchandising! Too much generic products or not enough at all to fill the stores. I hate seeing that messy stores with little inventory, no staff. The whole “Own your style” campaign is getting old too!
Agreed, no more woke cr-p. Embrace the customer and deliver customer service. I give Tony six months and then they’ll dig up Terry Lundgren to revive the company.
He’s still another insider. I wonder how we would be today if Hal was still around. Can’t be worse
Someone at the helm that will not concern themself with driving the political and social activism down everyone’s throats could be refreshing if it happens. No more of the “Let’s s Talk” BS sessions from JG once a month to discuss how employees need to feel and react to current events. The whole notion of that this or any other company must be fully woke has been proven that in the end it fails. Ask the stockholders of InBev / Anheuser-Busch on how that worked for them.
Just sell whatever good, service or experience you offer and stay out of the business of worrying about who will be offended. Most important, treat everyone with fairness and respect and stop putting any groups front and center only to anger the other 90% of the customer base. When you have these thugs disrupting the business then speak up and take real action against it. If you need to close stores then these crime infested inner city stores are the 1st to go. Protect the employees and most importantly the shoppers. By doing so not only can you increase the moral of employees no longer have the courage to speak up you also separate yourself from other retailers stuck in this mindset that catering to whatever the latest cult of the week is essential to survive. If Tony is willing to take this approach IMO I can see a future ahead that can work. Just a new attitude like this at the top could go a long way to get off the path the company is stuck on.
This is the only future I can envision:
Pasting from below
"If by “succeed” you mean to keep the company on life support long enough to allow executives, hedge funds, and other parasitic stakeholders (like vendors who customers don’t want to buy anymore but have contracts) to live off the decaying carcass with buybacks and dividend payments until it is bought and sold off for parts within the next 12-24 months."
I am hearing Tony will be out with the old and in with the new. Old Macys heads are headed to the unemployment line.
At this point, Tony is inheriting a walking zombie. So, It depends on how you define “succeed.”
If by “succeed” you mean to keep the company on life support long enough to allow executives, hedge funds, and other parasitic stakeholders (like vendors who customers don’t want to buy anymore but have contracts) to live off the decaying carcass with buybacks and dividend payments until it is bought and sold off for parts within the next 12-24 months. Then, Tony is perfect hospice nurse. His tools will be the constant drip line of comfort care dr-gs to hasten an efficiently run death like getting really good at traditional merchandising, doing more with less, and deeper cuts/layoffs - hastening the ending twilight of Macy’s existence.
If “succeed” is leading a turnaround that may require an entire rethinking/re-founding of what it really means to be in commerce in today’s modern world. Meaning, changing customer and investor perceptions, and maybe even requiring entirely new ways to operate and create new business models that would “herald” the pioneering of becoming something much different than simply a “retailer” - then Tony is very much ill-equipped. (But very few CEOs in the history of commerce would be…)
Occam’s Razor would be useful in determining which of the above is likely.