Iconic retail location begins going-out-of-business sale

It's been a tumultuous last several years for even the strongest and largest retailers in the United States.

The early 2020s brought an outsized amount of economic uncertainty. 

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Nobody could have planned for the outbreak of covid, and when large scale closures swept the nation, few retailers were prepared. 

Closures and lockdowns resulted in an near-overnight depletion in foot traffic. 

Decreased foot traffic obviously means smaller profits; when people can't go into stores to shop, sales dry up lightning fast. 

And when stores finally did reopen, many instituted max capacity orders, limiting the amount of shoppers allowed into a given store at one time. 

Eventually, those orders faded away, and most retailers returned to some semblance of normalcy within a year or two. 

But a year or two is a long time to operate with diminished profits, particularly if you're a big box retailer chain with a lot of overhead.

Macy's has struggled over the years

To that end, some retailers that once reigned supreme in the American shopping landscape were met with trouble.

Macy's  (M)  is one of those retailers. 

At most self respecting malls, Macy's was often the anchor store. 

Anchor stores are considered critical to a mall's survival, as they are typically one of the largest retailers and the main reason most shoppers visit a mall in the first place. 

They're often located at the ends or corners of a mall, and many shoppers opt to go through them in order to access the rest of the stores. 

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But as malls dwindle in popularity, and online shopping offers customers all the selection with added convenience (and often savings), that foot traffic traipsing through somewhere like a Macy's suddenly dries up. So too do the sales. 

In 2023, net sales were down 5.5% to $23.1 billion. Comparable store sales, which measure the performance of a store open for over one year, decreased 6% over the same period.

Macy's closes iconic location

The mall retailer has been outspoken about its intentions to stave the losses.

In 2024, it announced it would close 150 stores by 2026 as a part of its Bold New Chapter strategy. 

And now, it's closing its large Broadway Plaza location in downtown Los Angeles, a once iconic shopping locale for locals and tourists alike. The closure will leave the area without a department store, a first in about 150 years.

Customers have reported seeing liquidation sale signs, boasting price reductions of up to 70% off goods and merchandise, as the store location prepares to close permanently.

“Closing any store is never easy,” Macy's CEO Tony Spring said in a statement. “But as part of our Bold New Chapter strategy, we are closing underproductive Macy’s stores to allow us to focus our resources and prioritize investments in our go–forward stores.”

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