Macy's Downtown Seattle Store ... Gone

Gone (click here).

That's 3 out of 7 Seattle-area Macy's stores that are/will-be gone. Tradition-loving Seattle residents will feel the sting of this one, given how the store used to be the Bon Marche and much more importantly Fredrick & Nelson before that ... and how the store was the "anchor" of the Christmas shopping season.

3 out of 7 stores gone.

Do you remember how the catalog world contracted (dramatically) once e-commerce took hold? By the end of 2011 40% of all circulated catalog pages disappeared. Gone. They never came back, either. 

Now we replicate that process in retail. If you are a retail brand with 500 stores, 200-300 of them are going to disappear (the boring ones). 100 will survive and become entertainment centers. The other 100-200?  The jury is out.