CLEVELAND, Ohio -- Retailer Macy's announced earlier this month that it would close 68 stores across the nation and lay off 10,000 employees, continuing the long, slow decline of department stores in the modern era.
None of the remaining stores in Northeast Ohio are included in the closings, but Macy's stores at Midway Mall in Elyria and the Chapel Hill Mall in Akron closed last year, and the location at the Richmond Town Center closed in 2015.
Macy's isn't only department store chain struggling to adjust to evolving consumer preferences.
Sears recently said it would close its store at Richmond Town Square and The Limited, once the cornerstone of Les Wexner's retail empire, recently announced it would shutter all of its stores.
These struggles are a far cry from the early part of the 20th century, when departments stores dominated downtowns across the United States (including Cleveland's, which once featured eight downtown department stores).
The retailers have been slow to adapt to a changing business landscape in which consumers prefer buying goods online and can easily find better deals on high-end goods using their smart phones.
And even at brick and mortar stores, shopping habits have shifted in favor of discount retailers like T.J. Maxx.
This isn't the first time the department store industry has had to find itself. The department stores of downtown Cleveland had to migrate to the suburbs when Clevelanders left the city to settle in nearby towns. And the once grand emporiums were forced to scale back with the rise of shopping malls.
With Macy's and Sears announcing that they plan to restructure, we looked into the history of department stores and talked to industry insiders about the struggles of modern stores.
The department stores' heyday
Cleveland State University urban studies and business professor Richard Klein describes now-shuttered urban department stores that resemble sprawling shopping malls of the 1990s and early 2000s.
"When I first came here in 1967, they were still operating in downtown (Cleveland)," Professor Klein said. "I remember going and thinking how magnificent they looked. They knew how to cater to the customer, whoever that customer might be."
Massive stores like Higbee's, Halle Brothers and the May Company towered over Cleveland's streets for much of the 20th Century. Halle Brothers, for example, was founded in 1891 and closed in 1982.
"They grew as a result of the industrial revolution" which was marked by increased productivity, lower manufacturing costs and a growing middle class, Klein said.
Manufacturers tried to open their own stores, Klein said. "But that proved too costly. That opened a way for innovative merchants to consolidate their resources and form larger corporations to sell items to the public. Department stores came as a result of that."
The giant retailers gave Clevelanders a way to buy everything they needed in one place. Consumers could buy clothes and groceries, but they could also stop at a restaurant, buy an easy chair, and find a toy for their kids without leaving the building.
"Some of them had playlands and miniature amusement parks right inside the buildings," Klein said.
Today downtown Cleveland has no department stores.
The retailers that once dotted downtown Cleveland fell prey to the same forces as modern department stores like Macy's: economics and evolving consumer preferences.
The Consumer Goods Pricing Act of 1975 marked the beginning of the end for the sprawling urban shopping centers, Klein said.
Before Gerald Ford signed the act into law, "quality merchandise had to be sold by reputable dealers and would have to be sold at a fair market price," Klein said.
For the first time discount stores could sell high-end goods, cutting into department stores' profits.
And in the 1970s, a new generation of shoppers emerged that considered price more important than customer service and the downtown department stores slowly began to fold, Klein said.
Higbee's survived the longest, lasting into the 21st century until it was purchased by Dillard's.
They were supplanted by retailers like Macy's and Kohl's, which catered to an increasingly suburban clientele in shopping malls
Problems in the modern era
In 2017, the retail industry again seems poised for a massive shift.
Those shoppers who continue to visit brick and mortar stores increasingly patronize discounter discounters like T.J. Maxx.
T.J. Maxx's profits eclipsed those of Macy's for the first time in 2015, the New York Times reported recently, and the gap continues to widen.
But the biggest challenge for departments stores is a problem that's long vexed retailers of all stripes in 21st Century: the internet.
The threats posed to department stores by online retailers like Amazon is well-documented.
Younger shoppers show a preference for online shopping and stores have been slow to adjust, said Mariana Mitova, a professor in Bowling Green State University's apparel merchandising and product development program.
"Even the younger kids are very familiar with making purchases on the app store or online very easily," she said. "All they need is mom or dad's credit card and they can do that on their own."
But the internet poses other less publicized, but no less disruptive problems.
"It's not just the internet, but the way customers use the internet to shop," Mitova said. "For the past few years we've seen customers doing price comparison in the stores through their smart phones," cutting into department's stores profits.
Department stores have tried to get in front of the digital revolution with gadgets of their own, she said.
Employees use tablets to demonstrate products, they've installed body scanners to help customers make choices about their clothing size, and they've hosted parties in their stores to draw in customers, she said.
But with new apps and online shopping outlets appearing so quickly, new struggles seem to emerge as soon as department stores adapt to the old ones.
"The changes are happening too fast for large stores to keep up and implement and innovate quickly or tune in to what customers really want," Mitova said.
Department stores and malls
For years, department stores like Macy's and Kohl's have served as the cornerstones of shopping malls across the country and it's difficult to talk about one without mentioning the other.
And as malls have struggled, so have department stores, said Joe Tokosh, a Ph.D. student at Kent State University whose doctoral work involves the study of malls.
"For example: I used to work at a shoe store in a shopping mall, and it's not what it was even six years ago," he said. "If the malls start to fail, the departments stores start to fail."
Online retailers, he said, make it difficult for any type of any type of brick-and-mortar store to stay afloat.
Suburban shopping malls started to pop up in the late 20th Century and today it seems like they are everywhere. Cuyahoga County alone has Crocker Park, SouthPark Mall, Great Northern Mall, Westgate, The Shoppes at Parma, Tower City, Severance Town Center, Legacy Village and Beachwood Place.
Vacancies at many of those malls continue to rise as shoppers abandon their stores in favor of online retailers.
As malls expanded in their heyday, so did the department stores, creating convenience when they were popular, but compounding their problems when the began to struggle.
"Department stores are over-saturated," Klein said. "Convenience is a great thing, but after awhile it doesn't generate profits anymore."
But Klein remains optimistic that the modern stores will adapt.
"I think Macy's is learning now," he said. "They're not going to expand to the point that its names loses the sense of prestige."