Macy’s CEO: Stimulus Checks Already Lift Sales 10 Pct

The CEO of Macy’s said effects of $1,400 stimulus checks are already starting to show up in the company’s stores and website.

In a televised appearance Tuesday evening (March 30) on CNBC, Jeff Gennette said business from loyal shoppers of the department store chain has increased 10 percent from the prior quarter that ended in January, noting that the ongoing COIVD vaccine rollout was also helping.

“That’s clearly the vaccine starting to take root,” Gennette told CNBC. However, the executive acknowledged that Macy’s is “still taking a conservative view to this year.”

“We’re more conservative in the front half than the back half, but it’s positive momentum that we’re bringing into this quarter with us,” Gennette said.

The retailer said it reached 7 million new shoppers in the fourth quarter, and 4 million of them came through online channels. Gennette said younger customers and rising digital sales also helped fuel the growth,  noting the retailer’s “hard pivot” to boost its digital business last year.

Gennette said Macy’s is also looking to harness its brick-and-mortar locations, which at last check helped fulfill 25 percent of the retailer’s growing online orders.

The news comes as Macy’s posted its fourth-quarter and full-year results in February, which were led by a 21 percent jump in digital sales and increasing delivery expenses. The retailer told investors at the time that it views itself as a “digitally-led, omnichannel retailer” that’s facing a year of “recovery and rebuilding.”

In revealing its fourth-quarter and full-year results, the department store retailer said that rising digital sales let the firm report its third straight quarter of sequential growth during the essential holiday shopping season. “We saw solid holiday demand in November and December, which continued into January,” Gennette told investors on the firm’s earnings call.

“2020 was a year of unprecedented disruption,” the executive said, saying that the retailer’s “Polaris transformation strategy” revealed a year prior would see ongoing investment in digital and omnichannel selling, and highlighted the critical connection that its stores and websites play in supporting one another.