These are two small but potentially important pieces of a much bigger puzzle for Macy’s. Both STORY and The Market concepts are good moves directionally, however the challenge will be executing these at scale. I suspect these will both take a considerable amount of time to be fully realized.

I’ll admit it. I was a doubter. I hoped that Macy’s wouldn’t ruin STORY. With b8ta the possibility of success and retail joy increases signficantly.

Having a nimble technology partner to compliment a nimble retail experience (STORY) makes sense. Macy’s is working hard at being in the experience business. High five from here — I can’t wait to see what comes out of this partnership!

“b8ta, a retail-as-a-service startup founded in 2015 with the goal of giving consumers access to try new technology products before they buy” Macy’s has no business figuratively and literally trying to sell technology. Doing so only clouds their brand perception and it is not a vertical they can be competitive in. “Macy’s was the best partner for b8ta to scale our pioneering retail-as-a-service model to a breadth of categories like apparel, beauty, home, and more” If carefully curated by Macy’s or in Macy’s interest, their involvement in these categories via b8ta makes some sense. However, I don’t believe that a few years down the road, a revenue analysis is going to show much benefit nor will a customer acquisition analysis. Macy’s is acting as landlord with the hope of attracting add-on sales from the shopper attraction b8ta’s clients bring. That’s murky and the long way around to trying to reinvent the diminishing department store category. STORY was more in line with what Macy’s really needs: bold thinking and a new department store paradigm that is… Read more »

It’s nice to see Macy’s branching out and exploring new ways to deliver on its core premise and brand strength. Forging outside brand and platform partnerships makes so much more sense than throwing darts at new categories (J.C. Penney) or crow-barring third party sellers into an online marketplace (many others). Newness and frequency have never been more important in softlines/fashion retail and STORY and The Market allow Macy’s to quicken the cadence through partnership, even as it maintains a more traditional pace with its core lines.

Macy’s is definitely going in the right direction with these initiatives. However, they are peripheral and do not remedy the problems with the core business, especially in apparel. Macy’s still has a lot of work to do there to secure a prosperous future.

Under the STORY and The Market brands, Macy’s offers new and interesting products to consumers. Since these are not current Macy’s products being sold, it can offer some excitement and curiosity to the shopping experience. The challenge is, will this excitement be enough to entice the shopper to come to the Macy’s store regardless if she is looking for a Macy’s product or not? Adding b8ta to Macy’s toolkit should provide additional items for the shopper that are more technology-focused, ostensibly increasing the excitement level. However, this is not a slam dunk for Macy’s. It will take some time for these concepts to pan out.

It’s both fascinating and encouraging to see an iconic retailer such as Macy’s taking such bold steps with their investments in STORY and b8ta, which will help enhance both their experiential and community-based retail strategies.

We were having far different discussions about Macy’s a year ago. However, these are strategic steps that the company has to make to stay top-of-mind, relevant, new and fresh to the customer. The challenge as we all know is the ability to scale and operationalize these experiences beyond the 34th Street Herald Square store.

Macy’s continues to show us encouraging steps towards transforming their overall retail experience. With b8ta and STORY they are focusing on product discovery and a curated experience which they hope to scale. This is an important piece of the puzzle to bring more foot traffic to their stores and hopefully drive stronger brand loyalty with their customers. The missing piece now is how they will improve their apparel business while Amazon continues to chip away at them. It’s encouraging, though, to see how Macy’s is clearly trying to diversify themselves to become more than an apparel department store.

Macy’s is on a roll. The essence of their strategy? Experiential retailing married to a whole new world of product discovery. Baby steps now; real momentum for the future of Macy’s as the company redefines the physical world of retail. And no, I do not own Macy’s stock!

Cheers to Macy’s for boldly trying new concepts on the sales floor to thrill customers. I like what Macy’s is doing with The Market and I look forward to seeing what it does with STORY.

That being said, those experiences will happen in a limited number of Macy’s stores. The customer experience for the average consumer is still hampered by tired stores where shopping isn’t much of an experience.

So while I love all the innovations coming to select locations, I still want to see its other stores shine a little, too.

The reason Macy’s partnered with b8ta last year in its NY flagship was to gain intelligence to scale its Market @ Macy’s, so taking a minor stake is not a surprise. As I stated earlier this year in a blog, as the department store model evolves, I can see chains like Macy’s becoming almost entirely a retail-as-a-service model (with the exception of their major brand partners).

STORY and b8ta provide a powerful combination of experience and enabling technology that give Macy’s a real chance at executing the Market strategy well. It’s an important recognition that success often includes augmenting the existing organizational DNA and one of the reasons we are seeing so much investment and M&A into enablement technology organizations.