Macy's Macy's Everywhere. Gobble, Gobble

By now you may have read or heard that Federated Department stores, parent of Macy's and Bloomingdales has agreed to purchase the May Department store chain. This move had been rumored for several weeks and discussions had been off and on during that time.

What it means to you and I as gay consumers remains to be seen. Immediately it impacts shopping center owners who have both Macy's and a May DS as tenants. It will also affect the employees of May DS in their stores and headquarters.

My take on this is that most of those venerable May DS names such as Robinson's, Filene's, Strawbridge's, Hecht's and Famous-Barr will no longer be around. They will be converted to Macy's. In the end, this will make Macy's the largest department store chain in the country.
I'm guesstimating about 700 Macy's names will front various stores across the country.

Macy's until this time was not a real national chain like Sears Holdings and JC Penney. It can now successfully compete in one national advertising campaign and compete for the bottom line against chains such as Kohl's.

So when the dust settles, in many malls and communities, there will only be one major department store, Macy's, with two store fronts in many of these malls. ALso some cities like Milwaukee and Pittsburgh will finally be getting a Bloomingdales. Macy's itself will be coming to many smaller cities in the Midwest and Mid-South for the first time and returning to the heartland after pulling out of the Kansas City area years ago.

So when we see Santa in his huge float at the Macy's parade, it will finally have a major impact in sales for the chain on Black Friday, the day after Thanksgiving. What a wallop that will be. Should be having an impact on ScumMart as well.

So when you need a cool pair of jeans or some hot outfit for going out, Macy's will be cloning its look across America. Big city boys, watch out. Your cute country cousins are catching up. You will no longer be the one's setting fashion trends and wearing the latest threads. That's what I call a major change in fashion.