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Suzy Davidkhanian (00:00):

Verve's global omnichannel advertising platform redefines what's possible beyond walled gardens. Verve illuminates, connects, and activates high fidelity signals that drive outcomes for brands, agencies, and publishers at scale. Learn more at Verve.com. That's V-E-R-V-E.com. Hi, everyone. Today is Wednesday, April 8th. Welcome to EMARKETER's weekly retail show, Reimagining Retail, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Verve. This is the show where we talk about how retail collides with every part of our lives. I'm your host, Suzy Davidkhanian. And on today's episode, we're breaking down the department store channel, often accused of being outdated and on its way out. But if that were true, aren't marketplaces just the modern version of a department store? Joining me today is podcast regular analyst Rachel Wolff, who's sitting so close to me in our new offices, but not in the same room yet.

Rachel Wolff (01:02):

So close, but so far.

Suzy Davidkhanian (01:04):

So close and yet so far. Thanks for joining me, Rachel.

Rachel Wolff (01:07):

Thanks for having me.

Suzy Davidkhanian (01:08):

And we also have our first time guest on this particular show, principal analyst Paul Briggs joining us from my hometown Toronto. Hey, Paul.

Paul Briggs (01:17):

Hey, Suzy. It's good to be here talking department stores.

Suzy Davidkhanian (01:20):

I'm so excited. This will be one of many more episodes to come, I hope.

Paul Briggs (01:25):

Yeah, for sure. Anytime.

Suzy Davidkhanian (01:26):

So like you said, this week we're going to talk about department stores because once again, they're being declared dead. The latest headlines around Saks Global only add fuel to that narrative. And then of course you have Hudson's Bay in Canada, one of the first department stores ever that filed for bankruptcy last year after centuries in business. But I've always had a hard time fully buying into it. I spent my formative retail years myself in a department store. And what that taught me is that there's room for every format as long as it evolves. So for me, the real issue isn't whether department stores should really exist, but it's whether we're judging them in the way we should or are those metrics outdated. In this world of always on digital first, is success measured differently and is it more than sales per square foot?

(02:12):

Is it about how the store drives discovery, engagement, and value across multiple different channels? So today I have two experts who are going to talk to me about department stores and what that actually will look like for them to stay relevant. But before we get started, I wanted to ask you both. I'm going to start with you, Rachel. Very quick rapid fire. Tell me when was the last time you shopped at a physical department store?

Rachel Wolff (02:36):

So that was back in January and I had two reasons for going. One was because I hadn't seen any of the holiday lights and I wanted to catch them before they went. And two, because it was the post-New Year's sale and I wanted to see what goodies they had on offer. And that was Bergdorf, just to tell you where it was.

Suzy Davidkhanian (02:53):

And did you buy anything?

Rachel Wolff (02:54):

I did. I bought a pair of shoes.

Suzy Davidkhanian (02:56):

Oh, I like it. What about you, Paul?

Paul Briggs (02:59):

It's been a while. So I think as well covered in the press and the department store industry in Canada has been decimated. HBC Hudson's Bay was the last surviving holdout of the department store in Canada. And with their bankruptcy in 2025, my options are very limited. So it was at some point in 2025, when I was in one of those malls where the department store is an anchor tenant and I kind of gravitated towards the anchor tenant to check out what was there and it was all shuttered up. So that was a bit of a sad day.

Suzy Davidkhanian (03:34):

I mean, I think just for our American listeners who aren't as familiar with the Canadian landscape, when I first lived in Canada, there were tons of department stores. Right now. It's only Holt Renfrew, which is like a Nordstrom style. And what we'll discuss in a little bit, Simons, which some argue is or is not a department store, but everything else is gone. Even the American department stores that came to the US are gone.

Paul Briggs (04:01):

Yeah. And I'm going to argue that Simons is a department store. And you mentioned earlier how department stores need to evolve, and there's a couple of key points with Simons, I think, sort of mark that evolution that we should talk about.

Suzy Davidkhanian (04:13):

Well, let's start with that then. How are you guys thinking about defining what a department store is today? I know for me, and we talked about this as we were chatting and getting ready for the episode. For me, granted, I worked 15 years rounding up in a department store, so it was all about the multi-category. You had to have apparel, beauty, and home. It was multi-branded with a strong private label flavor, which is why people went to Macy's versus Nordstrom versus Bergdorf. It had to obviously have an extremely large physical footprint that was the anchor of a mall traditionally and so much more. I could keep going, but I'd love to get your take on what is a department store, Paul.

Paul Briggs (04:56):

Yeah, I would say the way I think about it is what it's not and what's the opposite of a department store in a lot of ways. And I would argue that it's the big box or super center that you see dotted across the retail landscape. So basically sprawling square footage, warehouse-y kind of feel the opposite of experiential. So I think where the department store is different is in that experiential aspect and really being a foil to the big box phenomenon.

Rachel Wolff (05:29):

Yeah, I would agree with that. I mean, I think that I favor a more pared down definition, which is, as Suzy you said, multi-brand, multi-category retailer. I know that a lot of people tend to associate them with malls, but I think especially now that's kind of being decoupled. And I think for the future of the department store, that kind of also has to continue happening. So I kind of favor a broader definition.

Suzy Davidkhanian (05:52):

So for you guys, as broader definition, is that real estate and the number of categories that the retailers should have or is it more around ... 'Cause the newer sort of definition too that's coming around is around more curation and more omnichannel sort of delivery mechanisms versus what it was traditionally, which was everything under the sun, under one roof.

Paul Briggs (06:16):

Yeah, I think that definition, everything ... So it's a big point about multi-category and is it a one-stop shop. I think the future of a successful department store is really sort of a pared down category approach, focus heavy on fashion, home furnishings, and maybe a few other categories as opposed to dozens of categories. I think that is probably, especially with online shopping where a lot of people get a lot of categories of goods online on repeat. I think those are the areas where department stores should probably avoid. So a sort of paired down version of a category approach.

Suzy Davidkhanian (06:56):

Cool. Well, now that we have that squared away, let's talk about how do you make it successful? If you're running a department store today, how would you actually measure success? Rachel, give me a couple of things.

Rachel Wolff (07:07):

So the first thing that I thought of, and this is not even specific to department stores, but I think for retailers generally, is looking at your social media relevance because these days a lot of what gets people into a store is discovering them on social media and getting them excited about the idea of visiting that store. So especially if you want to attract younger consumers who may not have always grown up with having a department store in their local malls, I think that's really critical for department stores to continue attracting new generations of shoppers.

Suzy Davidkhanian (07:36):

Yeah, I think you're right. Being relevant is so much more than just being loved. And if you're not part of the conversation and you can't ... You need to measure that to make sure that you're always part of a different conversation so that people come to you. It sounds to me like that's also traffic driving, right? What are some of the different ways to drive traffic to your department store so that it is successful?

Paul Briggs (07:57):

Yeah, I think there's some, in terms of profitability at the store level, I think with a big network of department stores, there's a way for underperforming stores to fit into the broader network and maybe not and be dragged along with the higher performing stores. So I think looking at individual store performance by location in a particular neighborhood or city is very important. And that could be looking at sales per square foot at that particular location, treated as sort of an independent retailer on its own. The other thing that I think is increasingly important is e-commerce share. So some of the categories I mentioned earlier like apparel and home furnishings, they have sales penetration of those categories for e-commerce, close to 40% of all sales are in those categories are done online. So as a purveyor of these goods, you need to have a really solid handle on how much of those products are being sold online.

(08:51):

And I think e-commerce share is an important one as well. Something that's a little softer and a little bit more traditional is cultural resonance. It could be at a national level or it could be at a city level, but I think the idea of a sort of iconic store, typically downtown, that's a destination, especially at the holidays. I think that cultural resonance is also a really, really nice to have.

Suzy Davidkhanian (09:15):

That's kind of like the relevance piece. But you know what? Every time I went home, I bought Hudson's Bay striped merchandise and clearly I was not buying enough. And anytime I travel with that bag, like any Hudson's Bay merch, everyone who's Canadian is like, "Oh my God, are you Canadian?" But clearly relevance is critical. Love is important, but there are many other things. You guys touched on some of the old school traditional ones. I'm going to add a few more. When I was a merchant, we had to think about return rates and sell throughs and weeks on hand, even things like aged merchandise so that there's always freshness on the floor. The traditional KPI, Paul, you said it was sales per square foot, but I'm throwing in that if I was designing my own department store, I would also look at how much cross-selling is happening, the cross-category penetration, which kind of goes back to this halo effect.

(10:06):

You have an amazing light for Christmas holiday season. People are coming in. What else are they buying? Are they just buying an ornament or are they buying more things? What does that look like? And often we talk a lot about the loyalty program and how many members are part of it, but I would throw in how many are active members and how can we keep that base? Because I imagine for most department stores, it's like 80% of the sales come from 20% of the shoppers. So it's interesting. Lots of different ways of thinking about success in the modern day. If you think about that, and I think we all agree that there is a realm of possibility where department stores continue to evolve and stay successful, but it also means that we have to keep some of the traditional things and then add some new elements to make it a little bit more modern.

(10:51):

So with that in mind, I thought we could do this new segment called keep or kill. And what I mean by that is you got to make some tough calls. I'm going to give you a couple of different things that I think department stores are really well known for, features that are department store E, and then I want you to tell me in rapid fire succession, you'll each do it together. So I'll ask you one, you'll both say yes or no, and you'll tell me why you're keeping it or you're moving on. So my first one, we said it at the onset, giant assortments. This is a classic department move. It includes private labels. It includes a lot of chaos. Sometimes the stores are not looking good 'cause there's too much stuff everywhere. You sort of, another different podcast, we talked about the paradox of choice. Sometimes there's just so much chaos it doesn't feel good. Keep or kill, Paul?

Paul Briggs (11:43):

Giant assortment, I would kill it in favor of a paired down, more strategic approach. So if giant is 100, I would probably pair it down to somewhere like 70.

Suzy Davidkhanian (11:54):

Rachel?

Rachel Wolff (11:55):

I would actually keep it because I think that that's part of the charm of going to a department store is being able to find all different brands of all different price points and all different categories.

Suzy Davidkhanian (12:06):

I feel like there's probably a way to use an app to make it giant but curated, so it's easier to navigate, but also to your point that there is everything that you could possibly be looking for in one small space-ish, maybe not, because that's the other thing about department stores. Number two, multi-floored, gigantic, large format stores often in a mall, not always depending on what city you're in. It's all about the real estate in some ways. It's not that intentional, it feels like when you're walking the store, but maybe it is, not that easy to navigate. What do you think, Rachel, keep or kill multi-floor large format stores?

Rachel Wolff (12:43):

I'm going with keep again. And I'm caveating that with, I don't think that this should be the exclusive format that department stores should operate in. But again, I think there is a lot of value to the shopper, especially if you're thinking about adding experiential elements. I think having a larger space helps with that. And I think this is really how department stores can get people interested in coming to their stores by having them be big enough to draw that interest. Paul?

Paul Briggs (13:05):

Yeah, I would keep it as well. I think the multi-format, lots of different sections is part of the experience of going to a department store. For me personally, riding the escalators, big, big bonus. So I'm in favor of keeping it.

Suzy Davidkhanian (13:20):

Oh my God, this just made me think about the Macy's Herald Square store where something that they talk a lot about those wooden escalators. I love that. Okay. Number three, restaurants, coffee shop services helps drive traffic, hopefully helps increase spend and dwell time keep or kill, Paul?

Paul Briggs (13:38):

I'm going to say kill, mostly. So what I mean by that is in a few flagship locations where experience really, really matters, I think it's good to have that restaurant or cafe or salon or other retail experience that keeps people longer. So I would say keep it in flagship locations.

Suzy Davidkhanian (13:57):

Interesting. Rachel, what about you?

Rachel Wolff (13:59):

I say keep. I think they're reliable drivers of foot traffic, which again, gets people to the store, gets them to see what else is on offer. And I'll add a personal anecdote, which is that as a child, I always wanted to go to the Bloomingdale's because they used to have a chocolate shop on one of the floors. And so that was really the treat that I would use to drag my parents there.

Suzy Davidkhanian (14:18):

I love that. And now it's probably the 40 carats. Is that what the ice cream store is called? The one downtown here in the city has, I think it's 40 carats, where there's lineups in the home store for people to get that frozen yogurt.

Rachel Wolff (14:29):

Well, it is delicious.

Suzy Davidkhanian (14:31):

I agree. I really agree. Okay. The last one for this part, keep or kill, my personal favorite. I don't think everybody associates this to the department store ethos, but it is true that they are very well known for complicated sales cadences and these high, low pricing and this promotions and gamification. And there's some sort of idea around it's fun, but it also sort of erodes trust. So I don't know about this one. Keep or kill, Rachel?

Rachel Wolff (15:00):

I am going to hedge and say, I think I would lean towards kill, but I'm not particularly strong either way. I think there's probably an advantage to having a clearer sales cadence, but I don't think it necessarily hurts department stores to have occasional offers that allow them to stand out from the rest of the retail landscape.

Suzy Davidkhanian (15:16):

What about you, Paul?

Paul Briggs (15:17):

I would kill it. I think it's a necessary evil in many cases, because inventory is aging and it's got to be moved. But I think it's in an era where AI shopping is more common, I think it's going to be harder to fool people on prices. The more clear you can be on what something costs, the better.

Suzy Davidkhanian (15:34):

Having come from the world where we got to dictate the pricing, I would say they're not trying to fool anyone, but I know it feels like that sometimes. And then as I was saying like, "Oh, I don't know about this." At the same time, let us not forget what happened with JCPenney when they tried to get away with that gamification. It's almost like the department store crowd is accustomed to and loves friends and family and one day sales and Kohl's days and cashback. And so it's almost like, oh, I was going to say the word drug, but I don't think that's the right word to use. So use a different word, but you know what I mean? It's addictive and it's gamified and it's part of the whole retail process. That's all I have for Kill or Keep, but it sounds like there are definitely two camps.

(16:17):

There is keep, I love department stores. We probably just need to figure out how to update them a little bit, Rachel. And Paul, who's coming at it from the Canadian angle where a lot of different department stores didn't make it. And so you're using all of that knowledge to be like, "Oh, I don't know about these stores." So if you are starting from the ground up and you can build your own store from that, from nothing, what would that look like? Let's do our typical pie. I have some slices for you and because I never follow instructions, there's also a wild card, so you can plug in a slice as you wish. You don't have to use every slice, but I would like for you to give me the percentage for each of the slice obviously has to equal to a hundred. So the slices are loyalty program and membership ecosystem, number two, private label, number three, brand partnerships and curated assortments, number four, fashiontainment or experience your retail.

(17:10):

Number five, breadth of available category, so that idea of a one-stop shop. Number six, tech-enabled omnichannel experience, so like modernizing the store or the wildcard. For the listeners, everybody had this already in writing, so they do not have to remember. But for you, I'm just going to say one more time, loyalty programs, private labels, brand partnerships, retail experiences, the breadth of available categories, and the tech-enabled omnichannel experience. Who wants to start?

Paul Briggs (17:37):

Go ahead, Rachel.

Rachel Wolff (17:38):

Right. I've been drafted. So I also didn't exactly follow rules and I left out most of these categories from my pie chart.

Suzy Davidkhanian (17:46):

That's okay.

Rachel Wolff (17:47):

So I'll just start with what I think would be the biggest slice in my hypothetical department store, and that's the brand partnerships and curated assortment, and that's 50% of my pie. And we've talked a lot about this a lot already, but I think that having that curated assortment and that selection of brands is really important for department stores in order to build the sense of style authority and to get people interested in seeing what the store has to offer. And I also think that department stores have to be careful about how they do this. It's not merely a question of getting the Nikes of the world into your store, but you also have to have this mix of unknown and unknown brands and really being able to, again, offer that kind of treasure hunt experience that's maybe less chaotic than an off-price store, but still gives shoppers that sense of discovery and a reason to keep going back to the store.

(18:37):

So that's the biggest slice of my pie. Another 20% I would say goes to fashiontainment, this idea of experiential retail. Again, if you're looking at ways of getting people excited to go to the store, having in store activations is a really great way of doing that. And as I said before, in terms of social media relevance, that's sort of catnip to people on social media. So getting that attention, driving that interest, I think that's a really important aspect of the department store model. I would say breadth of available categories, maybe another 10%, so we're at 80% now, I'm not going to go too deep into that one. But I will also use my wild card. And so for the last 20%, I'm going to go with customer service and particularly high touch customer service, because I think that again, how a department store can differentiate itself in an era when e-commerce is gaining share is in that human touch that a sales associate can offer, the assistance in the store, being able to offer advice, answer questions, being able to recommend products, and also building that relationship over time.

(19:39):

If you look at some of the most accessible department stores like Bergdorf, for example, a lot of that success is down to the relationships that the sales associates have built with the customer base.

Suzy Davidkhanian (19:48):

I love that piece. And it's definitely the AI defensive, online defensive marketplace defensive layer. Great. Thank you. What about you, Paul?

Paul Briggs (19:57):

I was listening to Rachel, and I could say that we agree on almost nothing. So the only thing ... Actually, that's not totally true, but in terms of our rankings and the size of the slices of pie, we agree on number two, which is fashiontainment, but what feeds that fashion tame or that experience is different. So whereas Rachel had brand partnerships, my number one category is private label. So I had private label at 40%, and I took a look at what Simons in Canada is doing. They have roughly 70% of what's on their shelves as private label, and it's been very successful for that particular retailer. So I think with private label, there's more control, there's higher margin, and there's a good ability to control inventory over time. So I think private label to me is their number one strategy, followed by number two, which is that fashion tame. And then for the third and fourth-

Suzy Davidkhanian (20:50):

Wait, how much are you giving fashiontainment?

Paul Briggs (20:53):

All right, sorry. I've got 20% for fashiontainment.

Suzy Davidkhanian (20:55):

20%, got it.

Paul Briggs (20:56):

So I'm up to 60. Then I have loyalty and tech at 15% each. The reason I have these fairly low is because I think it's sort of table stakes these days. It's not necessarily a strategic lever to use, either loyalty or tech to get ahead. I think every retailer's doing it. So you have to have it, but it's not necessarily a competitive differentiator. And then I had brand partnerships at 10% because I think it's important to have that covered as well. So it looks a lot different than Rachel's, a different strategy.

Suzy Davidkhanian (21:27):

I love this. You guys, if I was doing a pie, I didn't really think about it, but I would have combined brand and private label as one main bucket, only because you need the private label to be differentiated and it's critical to drive traffic and you can't comp comparative shop a private label. You have to build them in a way that almost like Simons tweak. I don't know if ... There's so many brands that Simon has that nobody I think understands are actually private label. For the Macy's Inc. World, that's Aqua, where I don't know that a lot of people knew that that was a private label brand and you're only able to buy it at those stores. But if someone's looking for Levi's or some of the other national brands and you don't carry those, then you're also losing out people. Sometimes it's those national brands like the Cliniques of the world that drive the traffic into the store and then people are buying other stuff when they're already in the store.

(22:16):

So I also love this idea around if you could have some of those TikTok, I seen on TikTok brands in the department store, how cool would that be? It would be the best of everything across all of the different categories. My only addition that was my wildcard was around, I think in Europe, I saw a lot of the department stores have these resale areas like hubs where they were leaning really into this idea around recycle, refurbish. And I wonder if our department stores here also need a section of too good to go style things. We can keep going on, but I want to ask you, at the end of the day, do we think in our re-envisioned evolved world of department stores, there's still a place for them in North America? Rachel, I already feel like you're leaning very heavily on the yes on this one. So I'm going to let you go second and have Paul start us off with, is there a place for this?

Paul Briggs (23:07):

Well, as you know, I'm in Canada and two different retail environments, Canada versus the US. So North America might be too broad a scope. So I think in Canada, it's already gone away. And I think what's going to come in its place is something more hybrid. But I think in the US, I think we're going to see big store networks, not necessarily hundreds of store networks. Maybe it's a smaller number of store in the network focused on big cities, focused on experiences. And I think that's how department stores will flourish in the future.

Suzy Davidkhanian (23:37):

Rachel, what do you think?

Rachel Wolff (23:42):

I, as there's probably no spoiler to say that I do think that there is a place for a department store. I think the question really is, can they be as big an influence as they once were? Probably not. But in terms of department stores as a place for discovery of new products, new brands, as a place where people go to spend time, I think that there is very much room for them to continue in that vein.

Suzy Davidkhanian (24:02):

And I'm just throwing in that the sort of image and narrative that department stores are like dinosaurs, I think it's just because the consumers that are saying that are probably not the ones shopping them. If I think about Bloomingdale's used to have you walk through, it was at the flagship store, but you walk through this machine where it would tell you what the perfect jeans were for you, kind of like a security machine. That's what it felt like. And then it would help you figure out, based on your body type, what are the right genes for your body type. So I think there are lots of ways that the department store can continue to evolve, but the customer has to come along with them. And I think we could keep going and going and going. And I think we should probably even just do an episode on private label alone, but this is where we have to stop for today. They're not dead department stores, but we just have to redefine them in real time. Thank you, Paul.

Paul Briggs (24:47):

Thanks, Suzy.

Suzy Davidkhanian (24:48):

Thanks so much for joining us, Rachel.

Rachel Wolff (24:50):

Thank you.

Suzy Davidkhanian (24:50):

And thanks to the listeners and to our team that edits the podcast, please leave a rating or review and remember to subscribe. I'll see you for more re-imagining retail next Wednesday. And on Friday, join Marcus for another episode of Behind the Numbers, an EMARKETER podcast made possible by Verve.