Macy's is set to remove 100 jobs after a report from the previous holiday season sales revealed disappointing figures. As a result, the company stated that it will apply a new restructuring plan to revive its dwindling sales outcome.
The leading department store chain in the US specified that it would remove a hundred job posts from the vice president level and above in order to make Macy's more flexible and agile as it aims to put more attention on ways to lure shoppers back to their stores.
"The steps we are announcing to further streamline our management structure will allow us to move faster, reduce costs and be more responsive to changing customer expectations,'' The Washington Post quoted Jeff Gennette, Macy's CEO, as saying in a statement.
The CEO also said that Macy's sales for the 2018 Q4 did not match with their expectations. This is because their projection was quite high compared to the actual results.
Macy's is not expecting its sales to grow in 2019 as they know it will not be much better than last year's holiday season. Thus, the best way to combat the company's loss is to lessen its cost by simplifying its management structure.
The decision for new restructuring plans was laid out after Macy's revenues dropped to $8.46 billion from $8.67 billion for the full quarter of last year.
The figure already includes the sales in departments that the company licenses.
Business analyst expected that the retail company will show at least 0.9 percent upturn but the actual number was way below the projected sales. Despite this, Macy's online sales presented a more impressive outcome as it increased to a double-digit percentage.
According to Market Watch, Macy's chairman and CEO blamed the weak sales on two factors and cited the Macy's West Virginia mega center fire that happened on Nov. 24, 2018, as the first cause. Regarding the unfortunate incident, the Macy's executive said, "It put pressure on our fulfillment network as it required us to shift volume to our other mega centers as well as to our stores. The fire caused a portion of our merchandise inventory to be unavailable on dotcom during cyber week."
Lastly, the second reason was the company's pre-Christmas event called the "earn-and-redeem." Previously, this promo is open to all the customers but last year, only the members of the Star Rewards program were eligible to avail it.
"Holiday is the time where we have a steady flow of new and occasional customers into the brand and we missed an opportunity to engage them more fully with our great values," Gennette said. "We adjusted our promotional calendar for 2019 to address this."
