What: In her first feature interview as Macy's chief merchant, Nata Dvir discusses category changes and addresses past criticisms of the business.

Why it is important: Like many retailers capitalizing on the current financial health of consumers and their eagerness to shop, Macy’s sales volumes this year are exceeding 2020 and 2019 levels.

Strategies to diversify the offering, experiment with smaller formats, and to capture market share in younger segments where the retailer has long fallen short seem to be kicking in, and despite continuing store closings, Covid, inventory and labour shortages, perceptions on the business are changing for the positive.

Nata Dvir, a Macy’s veteran stepped up to the role of chief merchandising officer of the Macy’s brand last February, after serving as senior vice president and general business manager for beauty and centre core merchandise. She reports to Jeff Gennette, Macy’s chairman and chief executive officer.

When asked if the expansive scope make it hard to have a clear identity, the executive says “one thing I always ask my team is ‘why would a customer buy this at Macy’s?’ Why Macy’s for a specific category? Sometimes it’s about service and experience. Sometimes it’s about broad assortments.

Sometimes it’s about price. So being really definitive for each one of our categories, around the role they play at Macy’s, that’s been the focus.”

Dvir is in charge of bringing younger customers to the forefront, in all categories. “I actually think of the 28- to 45-year-old customer” she said. Among the 5 million new customers attracted last quarter, many of them are coming from the online business and in store, and also thanks to new categories: contemporary and beauty. “We are also seeing a lot of new customers in home. We are a department store. We carry many categories, so it’s about getting us all focused on getting the right assortments, simplifying our pricing, being more relevant for a younger customer that increases the customers’ basket.”

Macy’s has always been strong in special occasion, tailored clothing, dresses, shoes and the gifting category like fine jewelry and fragrance. Those categories will continue to be important. In order to expand the assortment, more casual in apparel, like outfit completers, whether that’s fashion jewelry or handbags will develop. Macy’s also develops new categories: “That’s why we are so excited about toys around this Millennial mom. We will have all the toys that sit under the Toys “R” Us name, and everything from Mattel, Barbie, Fisher-Price. And then in 2022 will come to see that come to life in store.”

When asked about further adding new categories, Macy’s will continue to test new ones. “It’s how we learned about the demand for toys. We launched toys two years ago and now we’re scaling it. We will always test new categories, primarily starting online. So if you think of pets, you will see fashion for pets. At this point technology is not a big growth category for us. What you are really starting to see is a focus on categories we’re good at and expanding them, such as textiles. So it’s not only about adding new categories. It’s taking the categories we are really good at and making sure we continue the dominance by expanding the assortment.”

Amid a Season of Progress, Macy’s Top Merchant Talks Strategy