A Tale of Two Articles

Today two of my articles published on that lighter-than-paper medium, the Internet. One was about the New Orleans industrial market—about which I found out something truly surprising, namely that all the dry warehouses, which is most of them, have been leased to the last square foot—up from 90% or so leased, a rare quick movement of space.

It’s a town I’d never written about except for diary entries and letters. It’s been completely beyond my professional orbit until now. I get to be a more national writer all the time.

The other article was about a perfect example of a corporate bonehead decision. The new owners of Marshall Field’s department stores, including the flagship store in downtown Chicago, consulted their augers, voodoo men and other retail consultants and have decided that Macy’s, which instantly evokes New York, would be a good name for the chain, including the downtown store, successor to a line of stores in Chicago named Marshall Field’s since Millard Fillmore lived in the White House. In this market, the Marshall Field’s name has an accumulated good will that you can’t buy, though it can be tossed in the dustbin of history easily enough.

No one here cares about the Field’s stores in, say, Minneapolis—those are former Hudson’s stores anyway, a name lost to the good people of the Twin Cities a few years ago in another fit of department store homogenization. In fact, I’m sure that if Federated Department Stores (Field’s new owners) decided to change every Field’s to a Macy’s except the downtown store, no one would care. Those are just twigs. Field’s downtown is the roots, the trunk and the shady bower.

In a larger sense, though, this is just one of the noises emitted by a floundering industry, namely the department store racket. They’re on their way to becoming as relevant to the American retail business as the five-and-dime. Slashing and burning unique and regional department store brands in the name of cost efficiency is like throwing the passengers' luggage overboard in a violent storm, rather than finding a safe harbor.