This week, two news items dominated the retail news world. One was the battle for Flipkart in India between Walmart and Amazon (Clash of the Titans! Walmart won!). The other was Macy’s purchase of Story for an undisclosed sum. Story Founder Rachel Shechtman is now Macy’s “brand experience officer. ”

Of the two, I find the Story buy way more interesting. Here’s why.

There are mounds of data indicating that people prefer to shop by lifestyle, not by “department ” or by “vendor, ” unless of course, as devotees, they just buy direct from that vendor. And by most (I’d say all, but I don’t want to be too hyperbolic) accounts, the department store experience is just not all that. People generally like shopping at Nordstrom, but 20% buy online now. Bon-ton and its subsidiaries have just bitten the dust, and there has been way too much talk about Macy’s starting to sell off its real estate, even though on-line sales are less than 15% of total. As we know from the Sears experience, selling off real estate is rarely a sign of a healthy retailer.

But does Macy’s sell what people want to buy? And do they sell it the WAY they want to buy it? In general, I have to say no.

I started calling department stores dinosaurs more than a decade ago, and have maintained that position. When Federated re-named all its freshly bought banners “Macy’s ” it committed an act that many will never forgive. No more Marshall-Fields? No more Burdines? This was an expense saving move that might be one of the worst in retailing history. Just ask a Marshall-Fields fan. And nothing says “sea of sameness ” more than hundreds of malls anchored by Macy’s stores. Really?

Terry Lundgren deserves some kind of retail prize for keeping the extremely over-expanded Macy’s banner healthy and growing during his tenure. The “My Macy’s ” initiative made some attempt to personalize the experience (meh), and he was clearly a pioneer CEO in supporting seamless cross-channel shopping experiences. He also was one of the first in my memory to reach out to Millennial buyers by creating a private label brand, Material Girl with Madonna and her daughter Lourdes. It was, at the time, a brilliant move, reminding the moms of their youth, while bringing the cool to their daughters.

However, time moved on and he ran out the string. So what comes next? For Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette, having weathered the 2017 holiday season nicely, it was time to make a move, and in my view, the buy of Story is brilliant.

Story made its bones re-creating its space with different themes. In the words of its web site:

Set in a 2000 square foot store located in Manhattan’s 10th Ave. retail corridor, STORY is a retail concept that takes the point of view of a magazine, changes like a gallery and sells things like a store. That means every four to eight weeks, STORY completely reinvents itself -from the design to the merchandise – with the goal of bringing to light a new theme, trend or issue.

Now, obviously, you can’t take a 2,000 square foot concept and scale it up to 181,000 square feet (according to eMarketer, the average size of a Macy’s store). But you can do a LOT to recreate a brand experience.

If you use the right analytics, you can figure out which concepts drive the most traffic and create the biggest buzz. You can create a sense of community among those who really like a particular concept, and turn them into “pods ” within those 181,000 square feet over time.

You can use technology to let shoppers know where in the bigger store you can find “more like these, ” and maybe most important, you can create anticipation, excitement and even some fun for shoppers. I can see myself checking to see what the next concept is going to be.

It’s hard for a department store to be eclectic. The old Bloomingdales I used to visit on 3^rd Avenue in NYC was the closest I’ve seen to a true eclectic department store experience. Not so much anymore.

If Ms. Shechtman is given a free hand to create different concepts for different parts of the country, we could find ourselves with a reinvigorated department store shopping experience. Think of it this way. When I look at the results that come up when I google Macy’s, I get a page that tells me all the departments I can shop. Womens Clothing, Shoes, For the home, Men (you mean I can shop for men there, or were you just afraid to include the word clothing?), etc.

Even worse, I think, their paid ad shows 4 categories today: Sales and clearance, 30% off select handbags, 40% off Columbia and 30-50% off Fine Jewelry. That’s not inspiring, and Macy’s ought to know by now that while price is important, it needs other demand drivers as well.

So my short-form advice is to definitely give the woman a chance to create a better brand experience, even if it’s just a store within a store. Take that concept and show it across selling channels too. So much more fun to see “Made In America ” as a sub-category or “Wellness ” or “New York ” (these are actual past Story concepts).

You know, we just published our 2018 merchandising and pricing benchmark, “Merchandising and Pricing 2018, Life After The Merchant Prince. ” In the data we note that despite all talk of personalization and curated assortments and appealing to Millennials, retailers still tend to cater to Generation X, and their merchandising groups are run by those same Gen X’ers, they still have broad assortments to appeal to, well…anyone, and generally it felt like no lessons have been learned. They hope technology will be a savior, but there’s very little context to it.

Macy’s is taking a [probably] short money chance that it can actually make a change. It can experiment and measure and create new content that appeals to a new generation of shoppers. They’ll still need technology, of course. Again, one store at 2,000 square feet is not the same as 600+ with an average of 181,000. But I really think they’re on to something. We’ll be watching. Perhaps the dinosaurs can be reborn.