People are resistant to change. And people in Chicago seem to be especially resistant to change.
With all the hand-wringing surrounding Marshall Field’s name change to Macy’s, you would think someone was suggesting painting the Water Tower blue, moving the U505 Submarine to Schaumburg, or opening a McDonald’s at the Field Museum.
Oh.
Well, you get my point.
Petitions have been started, web sites overflow with sentimentality about how Field’s = Chicago and Macy’s = New York, and what’s next? Steinbrenner’s buying the Cubs? Oh, why oh why does this have to happen to us?
I’ll tell you why: it’s business. The reality is that Marshall Field’s stopped being a Chicago institution when it was sold to a British firm in the early 1980s. In fact, at that time the name changed when they dropped the “and Company,” and nobody said a word. It was then bought by the company that owned Target (who eventually spun Field’s and its other department stores off because they weren’t doing as well as Target). Changing hands again, it wound up in the lap of the people who want to make Macy’s a national brand name.
And that’s…… bad?
Everyone who has memories of Field’s always points to the same things: the State Street store, the Christmas windows, lunch in the Walnut Room under the big tree. It’s not about the merchandise or the service at the store, it’s the fact that State and Washington is a destination. I’ve yet to hear a single complaint about the Marshall Field’s at Old Orchard changing its name. (“Oh, Sylvia, remember those pumps I bought for the New Year’s party in 1975? What am I going to do now that it’s Macy’s for cryin’ out loud?”)
Hence, my proposal to all the lamenters out there: go out and assemble the brightest among you, come up with a business plan, find some venture capitalists, and buy the State Street store and the Marshall Field’s name. Then you run the store and tell us how easy it is to survive in a retail environment where people will come and browse but then drive out to the suburbs to go to Kohl’s and Old Navy to buy things.
(Interestingly enough, this is what some people did in the mid-1980s with the Frederick & Nelson store in Seattle. They failed after six years.)
(Also, to continue parenthetically, Frederick & Nelson were the inventors of Frango Mints– Field’s got them because they bought Frederick & Nelson, so Frangos are a Seattle tradition, not Chicago.)
Field’s new owners have committed to keeping the Clock, the windows, the tree in the Walnut Room, and all the other things the weepy hundreds say they’ll miss. I even heard they’re going to leave the “Marshall Field & Co.” nameplate on the building.
So what’s the real complaint? Have any of these people actually stepped into a Marshall Field’s recently and purchased something they couldn’t get at Carson’s, Nordstrom’s, J.C. Penney, or Lord & Taylor?
Now, there are weblogs and newspaper columns with lists naming all the Chicago businesses that went under in the last 50 years. These lists are fascinating and real memory-joggers, but what gets me is the fact that some people are using these lists as illustrations of why the Field’s name shouldn’t be changed. The truth is that stores like Montgomery Ward and Lytton’s are gone because of a changing marketplace, bad management, a tough economy, customer demand, and/or technology. And let’s not leave out the desire of one company’s management deciding to cash in on their investment by selling out to a larger company.
I am as nostalgic as the next guy– in fact I would say moreso than the next guy– but nostalgia has its place: in your memory. Let’s allow the businesses of today succeed today, and on today’s terms.
Good luck, Macy’s.