Macy's Will Close and Sell Its Downtown Seattle Store
Another iconic Macy's (NYSE: M) store is set to close. Last Saturday, The Seattle Times reported that the department store giant plans to shutter its store in downtown Seattle in February 2020 and sell the building. It will be the third Seattle-area Macy's store to close in the span of a year.
Some pundits have painted the impending closure as another sign of the death of brick-and-mortar retail at the hands of e-commerce. There's some truth to that viewpoint: Macy's continues to face severe margin compression, due in part to the tough competitive environment. That said, issues specific to city-center retail -- and this particular location -- were far more relevant to this store closure decision than any broader threat to Macy's business model.
At the beginning of 2014, there were 712 full-line Macy's stores operating in the U.S. and its territories. As of two months ago, that total had shrunk to 579. While all kinds of Macy's stores have been subject to closure during this downsizing, the company's massive city-center stores have been disproportionately affected.
Source Fool.com
