Visalia’s Macy’s store will live to see another day, according to Macy’s officials and news reports.
CBS News reports Macy’s is closing three California locations in Southern California, but Visalia is not on the list. Stores in North Hollywood, San Diego and Santa Barbara are scheduled to close by the spring and summer of 2017.
It was reported that most of the stores that are closing are in urban locations.
According to the report, “Macy’s is slated to close 68 stores and cut 10,000 job across the U.S. after holiday sales disappointed and the retailer slashed earnings forecasts.”
The CEO and Chairman of Macy’s explained the decision to downsize in a company press release.
“Over the past year, we have been focused and disciplined about making strategic decisions to position us to gain market share and return to growth over time. While we are pleased with the strong performance of our highly developed online business, as well as the progress we have made on selling and visual presentation programs and expense reduction initiatives in 2016, we continue to experience declining traffic in our stores where the majority of our business is still transacted. Given the overall trends challenging us and the broader retail industry, and the time needed to execute new strategies, we expect our 2017 change in comparable sales to be relatively consistent with our November/December sales trend,” said Terry J. Lundgren, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s, Inc.