• by Sarah Mahoney  @mahoney_sarah, January 8, 2020

While things might have been worse at Macy’s, its sales fell 0.7% in November and December. And some predict that the report from Cincinnati-based retailer, the first major chain to release combined results, foreshadows discouraging results from other department stores.

Macy’s, for its part, described the declining results as positive, reflecting “a strong trend improvement from the third quarter” — especially in digital sales, according to CEO Jeff Genette in the announcement. “Additionally, customers responded to our gifting assortment and marketing strategy, particularly in the 10 days before Christmas.”

But the company is reportedly shuttering 28 Macy’s stores and one Bloomingdale’s store early this year. And it says that next month, it will use its previously announced investor day event to outline a new three-year strategy.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData Retail, called the results disappointing, and says those soft sales -- while not surprising -- underscore Macy’s challenges.
“Macy’s was inevitably helped by a relatively robust consumer economy where shoppers were happily spending online and in-stores,” he writes in his note on the results. “This lifted the whole retail sector. Without this fillip, which likely won’t be repeated as we move into 2020, Macy’s results would have been considerably worse.”

And compared to a total retail market that grew about 3.7% in the last two months of the year, the numbers show Macy’s “is still losing customers and market share at a rapid clip.”

Still, Saunders was encouraged by the strength in a group of stores Genette has christened the Growth150 group, where the company has been focusing investments in improvements and new initiatives.

Macy’s is hardly alone in its struggles. A new analysis from Business Insider says 1,700 stores are already on the chopping block in 2020, with the total expected to break new records.

Last year, more than 9,300 stores closed, beating the previous record, set in 2017, of roughly 8,000 closures in 2017, according to an analysis by Business Insider. It reports retail giant Cushman & Wakefield estimates as many as 12,000 stores could disappear this year.