Growing up in Chicago in the 1960s, there was no grander place than Marshall Field's department store downtown. There are a number of other Field's stores in Chicago's suburbs now, and scattered around The Midwest, former Dayton's and Hudson's rechristened Field's by former owner Target. Talk about brand name dilution. To any Chicagoan who goes back to the 60s or earlier, where you went to shop was the flagship Marshall Field's, between State Street and the noisy Wabash Avenue "El" tracks.

Kids like me rubber-necked at the 13-story atrium; peeked wonderingly into the fancy dining space called The Walnut Room, where dressed-up ladies at leisure ate fancy sandwiches and drank tea. There was the big old clock outside, and every imaginable, high-end department store sort of thing for sale, from the fancy candies my Mom carefully selected to the wide-swaled corduroys, button-down shirts and stiff shoes she liked to dress me in. I bought my senior prom suit, a particularly hideous light-brownish three-piece number, at Marshall Field's, and some excessively clunky wing-tips to boot.

Marshall Field's brings back memories of a more innocent time. The original Dick Van Dyke Show. Baseball cards in an era before steroids and strikes in pro sports. Street hockey. Six teams in the National Hockey League. Corner drugstores with soda fountains. Elvis movies, 007, Wimpy's. Anti-war protests, the 1968 Democratic Convention. Uh, well.....you get the idea.

Marshall Field's has 153 years of history with Chicago. Only now, Federated Department Stores, the latest owner, is going to change the name

To.

Macy's.

Which is provoking a dung-storm of considerable force in The Windy City, and much misty-eyed remorse.

Yet the Chicago Sun-Times has an appropriately sanguine, logical view of the matter, as does Chicago Tribune business writer David Greising (free reg. req.), who explains:

Field's was part of what made Chicago special, but remember, "special" is an emotion. And this is business....Named Macy's instead of Field's, the stores here in the Midwest can have national advertising backing them. They can carry Macy's exclusive merchandise. They can model displays and promotions after what Macy's does in New York, or its designers dream up at the Federated Department Stores corporate headquarters in Cincinnati.

...People get mad because Field's demise was not an act of nature, it was a result of neglect. Marshall Field's became one of those foster companies, passed from corporate parent to corporate parent, dying a little with each unhappy new home. It got bought by Dayton Hudson, which itself soon became Target Stores, which sold Field's to May Department Stores, which in turn sold out to Federated Department Stores, which on Tuesday announced it will change Field's name to Macy's.

...Field's has lost some of its cachet over the years...cost-cutting that looked good at corporate headquarters..did not look so good when it meant display aisles with no service and cash registers with long lines. Switching to brown shopping bags sounded like a cost-saving move in the purchasing department, until executives saw the impact on sales. Moving the Frango production made eminent sense--but only to someone blissfully unaware of how the mayor of Chicago might value 157 downtown jobs.

Field's had something far bigger going against it than a few corporate miscues. Field's is part of an outmoded retailing model--the stand-alone department store. Wal-Mart and Target and changing shopping habits are hurting department stores. As a local player in an increasingly national game, the Field's name just could not hold its value anymore. A change to Macy's was inevitable. The national advertising will sell better, and Macy's purchasers can buy in bulk. The company's surveys show that the Macy's name has a slightly higher cachet, especially with younger customers.

...more and more, the world at large is beyond Chicago's control. Sometimes the city is just a spectator to decisions made elsewhere, based on facts and not our unique, emotion-filled history.

Ah, but we affect those decisions daily, perhaps without even realizing. Our buying patterns are increasingly compartmentalized, driven by convenience or preference, plus price and - one hopes - quality. I buy fresh fish and seafood from a neighborhood specialty shop. Paneer, Nan, Hot Mix and spices from an Indian specialty shop in Seattle's Pike Place Market. Produce from a neighborhood stand, though one across a bridge on Beacon Hill, because quality at the venue closer to home in West Seattle has fallen off badly, and lower prices are no salve for mushy fruit and tasteless corn. Our crackers, cereal, nuts, dried fruit, juice, water and wine come from Trader Joe's in a suburban mall. Paper products, garbage bags, tin foil, laundry detergent, toiletries and kitchenware from Target, in a West Seattle mall. Milk from the drugstore.

And we buy as little as possible from our independently-owned, large local grocery store. It has the worst-designed parking lot known to man, very hazardous pedestrian conditions on two of three foot approaches, and aisle displays which badly impede traffic inside in several locations. Worse still, the store charges exorbitant prices on 80 percent of the items all the time, to pay inflated union salaries to its workers, and then tries to compensate by encouraging labored chit-chat from the checkers.

Like the places I shop, Macy's and the old Marshall Field's stores that Macy's is to rename will survive only by offering distinctive merchandise, of quality, at highly competitive prices, in a decent shopping environment. And that last part depends more on inside and outside traffic patterns and wait times in line, than nice interior design, and either genuine or ersatz bonhomie.

Knowledgeable staff are a plus, but with buyer reviews of so many products now online, less essential. Additionally, reverse auctions online threaten some salespersons with obsolesence. Speaking of turned tables, does anyone really miss car salesmen, the vermin? They exist only to meet demand at the going low-ball market prices set by CarsDirect.com, as far as I'm concerned.

I love neighborhood shopping districts, they're where I prefer to shop. But they've got to offer stuff I want. In today's global, networked mall, "community"-oriented commerce requires baked-in value to the consumer; value beyond the warm self-regard derived from supporting local merchants, or the region's economy.

Idealism and emotion have less and less to do with how, or at least, exactly where (that word, again!) people spend their money. In commerce and news, discrimination and disintermediation will increasingly rule.

TECHNORATI TAGS: MARSHALL FIELD'S, CHICAGO, MACY'S

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Posted by Matt Rosenberg at September 21, 2005 02:57 PM