After pulling back on its holiday season hiring in anticipation of weaker sales this year, Macy’s m
said on Friday it will hire another 7,000 temporary workers, citing a
strong number of shopper visits so far this Christmas period.
In September, the department store, which has been beset by 11 straight quarters of comparable sales declines, said it would hire 80,000 temporary workers
for the holiday season, the second year in a row it was taking on fewer
seasonal associates. But Macy’s now sees reason to bring on more temps
in the run up to Christmas in just over three weeks and the days
following that.
“Macy’s
has had a great start to this holiday season with high customer volume
across our business,” said John Harper, Macy’s chief store officer, in a
statement. The company did not however quantify that with sales data.
Macy’s CEO Jeff Gennette told various media outlets last week, on Black
Friday, that business had been good. Nonetheless, Macy’s was hit by a
glitch processing some gift and credit cards Black Friday, but resolved
later in the day, though not without getting a black eye with some
consumers. .
Earlier this week, the National Retail Federation said that 174 million Americans shopped in stores or online
during the Thanksgiving–Cyber Monday holiday weekend, above
expectations for 164 million. While the NRF no longer provides an
estimate in dollar amounts of how the key weekend went, the consensus
among analysts and economists is that the 2017 holiday season got off to
a great start for the retail sector at large. For the whole
November-December period, the NRF has said it expects retail sales to
increase between 3.6% and 4% to hit as much as $682 billion.
The
jobs Macy’s are adding are on the sales floor as well as the areas
dedicated for in-store pickup of online orders and other functions. The
extra hiring is a nice contrast for Macy’s which this year has closed
some 68 stores and laid off hundreds of workers as it looks to cull weak
stores.
In
addition to that, Macy’s has been looking to reduce store clutter and
re-establish itself as a tastemaker and has relaunched its loyalty
program as part of its efforts to get back on track as detailed in this in-depth look at the company in the current issue of Fortune.
Still, Macy’s continues to struggle with a shopper exodus to the likes of Amazon.com amzn , T.J. Maxx and Ulta Beauty ulta among many others.
By: Writter
Birbal Babu <<
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