Alright, so I got curious the other day about Macy’s. You know, the big department store chain. Been hearing their name forever, seeing those big red star logos. I just started wondering, what are the actual big steps, the major things they’ve done over the years? It wasn’t for any big project, just me tinkering around, wanting to know.
So, first thing I did was just open up my browser. Typed in something simple, like “Macy’s history big milestones” or “what did Macy’s do first”. You know how it goes, just throwing stuff at the search bar.
Got a whole bunch of results back, naturally. Some looked like company PR fluff, others were news articles, history sites, the usual mix. I started clicking around, trying to piece together a timeline in my head. It wasn’t super straightforward, lots of dates and events flying around.
Here’s kinda what I pulled out from that digging:
- Way Back When: Found out it started super long ago, like 1858. Some fella named R.H. Macy kicked it off in New York City. Just a small fancy dry goods store back then, apparently.
- That Giant Store: Then there’s the massive Herald Square store in NYC. That thing opened in 1902. I saw mentions everywhere that it was the “world’s largest store” for a good while. That felt like a pretty big deal, putting them on the map.
- The Parade!: This one’s huge, obviously. The Thanksgiving Day Parade. Turns out Macy’s employees started that way back in 1924. Kinda wild that it began as this small local thing and blew up into what it is now. Definitely a major milestone you gotta mention.
- Growing and Buying: This part got a bit messy to track. Macy’s didn’t just grow on its own. It merged with or got bought by another big company, Federated Department Stores. Then, years later, Federated actually changed its name to Macy’s, Inc. And along the way, they bought up tons of other regional department stores across the country – like May Company, Filene’s, Kaufmann’s. That’s how they ended up everywhere. So, it wasn’t just one straight path, lots of corporate shuffling.
- Going National (Sort Of): All that buying up of other stores eventually led to them rebranding most of them under the Macy’s nameplate around 2005-2006. That was a huge push to make it one single brand across the US, though some people still miss the old local store names.
Finding This Stuff Out…
Why was I even poking around for this? Honestly, no big reason. I was just reading some news online, saw another headline about retail stores struggling or changing, and Macy’s popped up again. It just got me thinking, “Man, these guys have been a fixture for ages. How did they even get to this point? What were the big turns?”
It wasn’t some structured research project. Just me, clicking through search results for maybe 30 minutes, trying to connect the dots from what felt like scattered bits of info. You see the founding date here, the parade mentioned there, the merger stuff pops up on a business news rewind… You kinda have to piece it together yourself from all the noise online.
So yeah, that was my little practice run, digging into Macy’s past. Started small, built that giant landmark store, kicked off a massive parade tradition, and then went through a whole lot of buying and merging to become the coast-to-coast name most people know today. Quite the journey when you actually spend a few minutes looking back at it.