By Kim Zimmermann, Managing Editor
Terry Lundgren, the CEO of Macy’s, is a fairly recognizable guy. Chances are he couldn’t go incognito — a la the TV show Undercover Boss — to toil in a store, as someone would surely call him out as the head honcho.
But in recent interview with Bloomberg, Lundgren revealed how he does the next best thing to working undercover. He shows up at a store essentially unannounced — usually giving managers only a 10-minute heads up prior to his arrival. That narrow window of time doesn’t give the store associates much of a chance to straighten up for the boss, so he gets a pretty good view of how the store looks when they aren’t expecting company. He does this 40 weeks a year.
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Along with the scurrying store associates, Lundgren said he gets a boots-on-the-ground view of the “My Macy’s” program, an effort to localize store assortments. In one encounter chronicled in the article, he questioned the huge selection of men’s boat shoes in a store in Indianapolis, where the closest body of water is more than 200 miles away. The answer: Customers requested the nautical-inspired footwear. It was “My Macy’s” in action.
In the article, Lundgren noted that technology plays an important role in managing inventory, but emphasized that it is only one piece of the puzzle. When it comes to determining what customers want, “only people can answer that question,” he said.
Certainly there is some risk to having customers and associates drive some of the inventory decisions. If they get it wrong, there could be a lot of boat shoes left on the shelves in Indianapolis.
But Macy’s seems to be getting it right more often than some of its rivals, as the article noted that Macy’s has outperformed its department store rivals over the past two years.
