Macy’s has announced plans to close up to 40 stores early next year, roughly 5 percent of its namesake department stores.
The Cincinnati-based company has not yet decided which stores will close, Macy’s spokesman Jim Sluzewski told the Journal-Constitution on Wednesday.
“We’ll announce them as the final decisions are made,” he said. “It should be toward the end of the year.”
The Cincinnati-based company has 23 Macy stores in Georgia, 18 of them in metro Atlanta, Sluzewski said.
The company has 6,100 employees in the state, about 5,000 of them in metro Atlanta, including those who work at a technical operations center in Johns Creek, he said.
The company also has owns the Bloomingdales chain, but this week’s announcement did not affect those stores. There is one Bloomingdales in Georgia, at Lenox Square.
The stores to be closed will represent about $300 million in combined revenue, the company said.
Employees who work at the closing stores may be offered positions at nearby locations, and workers who are laid off will be offered severance benefits, according to Macy’s.
The company now has 770 Macy’s stores. Macy’s closes a few underperforming stores every year; it has closed 52 locations over the last five years.
During that time, Macy’s has opened a dozen stores. The company is planning to open six lower-priced Macy’s Backstage stores later this year, and more of them in 2016.
Macy’s has struggled against a strong dollar, which cuts the purchasing power of tourists.
And like many retailers, the company has been seeking new ways to boost sales in a time of frugality, Internet buying and a discount-centric consumer.
—- Associated Press contributed to this story
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