Macy's To Close This Maryland Store In Early 2023

MARYLAND — As retailers battered by the coronavirus pandemic see customers spending less because of high inflation, one major retail chain has started 2023 by announcing store closings, and that includes a Maryland site.

Macy's last week said it plans to close four stores in the first quarter of 2023, including the location at Lakeforest Mall, 710 Russell Ave., in Gaithersburg.

A Jan. 5 filing with the Maryland Department of Labor said 111 Gaithersburg store employees will be out of work.

USA Today reported one store each in Colorado, Maryland, Hawaii and California will close. But the timeline calls for the Macy's stores, all located in malls, to shut their doors in January. A clearance sale is expected to run for 8 to 12 weeks.

The company will offer employees at the stores targeted for closure a job at nearby locations or severance packages, Macy's said in an email to USA TODAY.

The closure will leave Maryland with 13 Macy's stores, according to the company's store directory.

• Annapolis
• Baltimore
• Bel Air
• Bethesda
• Bowie
• Columbia
• Frederick
• Glen Burnie
• Hyattsville
• Nottingham
• Towson
• Waldorf
• Wheaton

The Polaris strategy Macy's Inc. announced in February 2020 said the company, which includes Bloomingdale's and Bluemercury, plans to close about 125 stores as part of a three-year plan. Some closing in 2021 were delayed.

Neil Saunders, managing director of GlobalData, told Axios that after Macy's closures in the past two years, "What we are seeing now is more an opportunistic and gentle pruning. That said, I fully expect there to be more closures this year and in the years ahead as Macy’s still has a lot of sub-optimal stores that will probably perform badly as the consumer economy tightens."

Amid the store closings, Macy’s opening several freestanding, small-format stores in 2022. The locations included Market by Macy’s, according to a July press release from the company.

Macy’s also helped Toys “R” Us make a comeback, opening locations in all stores in 2022.

Even for chains that survived the pandemic, a spate of closures could be on the horizon for both department stores and large retailers in 2023, UBS analysts predicted in mid-December of 2022.

"These trends are likely not good for department stores as both luxury companies, as well as off-price retailers, compete directly with department stores," UBS analysts Jay Sole, Mauricio Serna, Shoshana Pollack, and Tiffany Agard told Insider. "We expect department stores to close locations as challenges persist."

“[W]e believe department stores face many challenges ahead,” Sole said as reported by RetailDive.com. “We model very weak earnings outlooks for Nordstrom, Kohl’s and Macy’s and believe these challenges are not fully appreciated by the market.”