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Fashion watch brands take another blow as Macy’s confirms closure of 125 stores

If you thought department stores have it tough in the UK, try competing with Amazon in the United States.

Small town independent jewellers are not the only businesses seeing watch sales decimated by the rise and rise of online shopping.

Department stores — a key route to market for fashion watch brands from the likes of Movado Group and Fossil Group — are floundering under the weight of huge real estate costs and dwindling footfall.

The latest giant to demonstrate how tough the market has become is America’s Macy’s, which announced this week that it will close around 125 stores over the coming three years.

That is around one fifth of its portfolio, which also includes Bloomingdale’s and Bluemercury stores.

The group also said it will reduce its headcount by around 2,000 people as part of a cost-cutting exercise designed to save $1.5 per year by 2022. It aims to save$600 million this year, alone.

“We will focus our resources on the healthy parts of our business, directly address the unhealthy parts of the business and explore new revenue streams. Over the past three years, we have shown we can grow the top-line; however, we have significant work to do to improve the bottom-line. We are confident the strategy we are announcing today will allow us to stabilize margin in 2020 and set the foundation for sustainable, profitable growth,” says Jeff Gennette, chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s.

 

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