Macys

Macy's Culinary Council, which includes some of the best known chefs in the world from Wolfgang Puck (above) to Nancy Silverton, have offered us some of their favorite recipes for celebrating Valentine's Day. From a goat cheese fondue to a butterscotch budino with caramel sauce, these recipes are bound to make your Valentine's Day entertaining a special one.

Chef Rick Bayless suggests serving his famous "Red Hot Margaritas". The recipe calls for Ferrara Red Hots, which provide the kick. The chef's recipe for the limeade can be used for other types of margaritas as well. "We were trying to come up with a margarita for our winter bar menu at Frontera Grill," says Bayless. "So we were thinking mulling spices...bright red color... and then someone said it: 'The drink should taste like a liquid version of those Red Hot candies.' Bingo."

Chef Takashi Yagihashi, proprietor of Takashi Restaurant in Chicago, suggests making his intensely flavorful Curry Kaffir Lime Soup recipe, which is best served to guests in little cupfuls. It can be passed as an appetizer, with colorful garnishes on toothpicks for a complete dipping and sipping experience. Kaffir lime leaves gives this soup its floral aroma and flavor.

More and more celebrities seem to branching into home decor. Last month we saw the announcement of Beyonce's House of Dereon bedding line. Now Home Textiles Today reports that October will bring the launch of a Sean John bedding line at Macy's. According to the article, Revman International, which is behind home lines for Tommy Bahama, Tommy Hilfiger and Michael Kors, is the licensee for the bedding group that is meant to be a reflection of Sean John founder Sean "Diddy" Combs' style and taste.

In a neat little branding tie-in one of the three bedding lines takes the name of the vodka Diddy promotes, Ciroc. The other two lines are Saville Row, named after the London street famous for its tailors; and Alpine, perhaps named for the pricey New Jersey town in which Combs resides. The beds will be done in metro-masculine shades of grays, blues, browns and plum with cotton sateen sheets. Mini-comforter sets, a comforter and two shams, will retail for$250 for the full/queen. Later the bedding line will be distributed to other department stores as well as the Sean John flagship store on Fifth Avenue.

Valentine's Day has been taken over by Twitter. This year the famous candy hearts feature the words "tweet me" and Macy's is getting in on the act with a Sweetest Tweets contest. To enter the contest you simply have to send out love-related tweets that are hashtagged #SweetestTweets. Each day from February 1 through February 13 Macy's will award a diamond pendant set to the person who sends the what is deemed the sweetest tweet of the day. On February 14 a grand prize recipient will win a three-stone diamond ring. The pendant is a 1/4 ct solitaire diamond pendant set in 14K white gold worth $600. The grand prize is a 1.75 carat total weight diamond ring in 18K white gold with a value of $8,900. Each participant may enter one tweet every 24 hour period during the promotion period so choose your 140 characters carefully.

More bad news for Macy's. The department store chain has announced that it will close five more stores during the next couple of months. Macy's closed 11 stores in 2009 and nine stores in 2008. The move will affect 307 full-and part-time employees and includes stores in Boise, Idaho, Waterford, Michigan, St. Ann, Missouri, Missoula, Montana and Burlington, New Jersey. Last year the company eliminated around 7,000 jobs. At the affected stores clearance sales will begun this Sunday and run for several months. After the closings, Macy's will operate 849 Macy's and Bloomingdale's stores and plans to open a Bloomingdale's in Santa Monica, California and one in Dubai.

An article in the Idaho Statesman laments the loss of the Boise store which has been in place for decades as a department store with a variety of different names. It was the last true department store in the downtown area and the article compares the loss to a death in the family. The St. Ann closure could end up dooming the Northwest Plaza in St. Ann. St. Louis Today reports that a group of investors bought the mall out of foreclosure in September for $29.95 million, The 1.7 million square foot mall has lost its Dillard's and many smaller stores. The Waterford, Michigan store is one of the last remaining anchors at the Summit Place Mall. The Detroit News says that the interior of the Waterford mall was closed five months ago. Commercial real estate broker Robert Pliska has been trying to sell the 84-acre site which was foreclosed on in October.

Yesterday, Macy's announced a strategic alliance agreement with the Ellen Tracy owner, Brand Matter LLC, and its sportswear licensee, RVC Enterprises. Under the terms of the agreement, Macy's will be the exclusive department store retailer of Ellen Tracy branded women's sportswear, beginning in March 2010.

Macy's will offer its customers an exclusive array of Ellen Tracy better sportswear focused on modern, related separates. This will include jackets, shirts, pants, sweaters, woven tops, knit tops and bottoms. Price points, for example, will be in the range of $99 to $149 for jackets and $50 to $99 for pants.

The exclusive sportswear will launch in more than 100 Macy's stores and online at macys.com with plans for additional rollout over time to additional stores. The launch will include new Ellen Tracy shops in Macy's largest flagship stores, including Herald Square in New York, Union Square in San Francisco, State Street in Chicago and Dadeland in Miami. The two companies will work closely together on new ventures and brand extensions for the future.

Ellen Tracy is joining other exclusive brands at Macy's, including Tommy Hilfiger, Martha Stewart Collection, Rachel Rachel Roy and Donald Trump.

While fans of the Ellen Tracy have something to cheer about with the Macy's deal, some confusion has been caused by an Chapter 7 involuntary bankruptcy petition filed against Ellen Tracy LLC , which was approved by the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York today. The petition was filed by three creditors seeking nearly $4 million in claims. The creditors were manufacturers of Ellen Tracy products.

The entity that is being forced into bankruptcy, Ellen Tracy LLC, is a former licensee of the Ellen Tracy name which ceased its operations some time ago. It has nothing to do with the brand anymore. Brand Matter LLC, on the other hand, is the entity that owns, manages, markets and licenses the intellectual property of Ellen Tracy.

Chic fashion designer Rachel Roy will be the latest to have a more affordable version of her wares for sale. Jones Apparel Group Inc., which has a 50% stake in the designer has said that it is launching a contemporary line called Rachel Rachel Roy to be sold at Macy's. The line will debut in August and will be priced at $59 to $299 for sportswear, $79 to $199 for shoes, up to $195 for jewelry, and as much as $109 for handbags. Jones has announced that the will also be lowering the prices on Rachel Roy's luxury label by 15 to 20 percent.

JC Penney was also in the news this week with the announcement that they will be offering a new line of Joseph Abboud clothing called the Joe Joseph Abboud men's clothing collection. JC Penney also recently launched a line with Charlotte Ronson.

Department store Macy's is feeling the fallout as shoppers buy less and malls become ghost towns. The company announced on Monday that it would be eliminating around 7,000 jobs, four percent of the company work force, over the next few months. Macy's Inc. also cut its quarterly dividend and has forecast earnings for fiscal 2009 far below Wall Street expectations. While it seems no company is optimistic about the coming retail year Macy's seems particularly pessimistic. The company will be closing 11 stores across the country. Other cost cutting measures include no raises for executives in spring 2009 and cuts in matching 401(k) contributions. Other benefits for Macy's execs including company cars, life insurance and merchandise discounts may be forthcoming. The Macy's numbers fall right between Sak's which will cut around 1,100 jobs and Neiman Marcus which plans to cut 375 jobs.

Everywhere I go I see signs that stores are going out of business. Part of the problem is that declining sales make it harder and harder to pay the rent. One of the solutions that some brands might be embracing in 2009 is the concept of sharing space. It's hardly a new concept but it's one that has fallen out of vogue recently as stores each mounted their own massive flagship enterprises. Mike Duff of BNET reported recently on two such collaborations. Danish silver seller, Georg Jensen recently refurbished its Manhattan store and asked 25 Danish companies to distribute their products through its store in a barter arrangement. The store was outfitted with the products, which are not sold in the store but Georg Jensen showcases the brands such as Bang & Olufsen and provides details how to buy them.

Another closer arrangement involves Macy's and FAO Schwarz. Macy's is adding FAO Schwarz shops to more of its department stores. All the stores that have space will get one of the new toy stores, a full 675 stores. The arrangement works well for Macy's which gets the prestige of the FAO Schwarz name and the distinctive traditional toys FAO Schwarz develops for its stores like giant stuffed animals. The Macy's selection includes a mix of private-label toys with "some of the best-sellers" from other sources that customers would find at the New York FAO Schwarz store.

I anticipate that we will be seeing more deals like these as well as other arrangements in the coming months as stores try to find ways to boost sales and trim the bottom line.

Actress Eva Mendes has become the latest celebrity with a home decor line. Her new line Vida, created with her partner George Augusto offers five bedding styles that she terms, according to a press release, "easy luxury - the colors, fabrics and textures that I live and love, brought to life in a stylish, comfortable and affordable way." The bedding will be sold at Macy's and will include four-piece bedding sets starting at $340 with completer sets of decorative pillows and shams selling for $100. The style shown above is Bettina.

Leonardo DiCaprio's gorgeous Israeli model girlfriend Bar Refaeli appears in the ad campaign for Sean Combs' modestly-named new fragrance, "I Am King." The pix (above) portray Puffy (or Diddy or whatever he's calling himself this week) tooling around in Saint-Tropez and Monaco on helicopters, yachts and so forth with Refaeli (left) and another model in typical mega-mogul fashion. New York magazine reports the new cologne will launch exclusively at Macy's in December with a global launch set for February, and a women's fragrance ("I Am Queen") to follow in 2009; global sales are expected to total $100 million in the first year alone.

Next up in the oh-look-we-are-green-too category comes Macy's which has announced that they will start using shopping bags made in part with recycled paper at its Macy's stores and biodegradable packaging for online shipments. The shopping bags will be made from paper that uses 30% recycled material and will be 100% recyclable. The previous Macy's bags were laminated and not recyclable, which is a big deal when you consider. Macy's uses more than 43 million handled shopping bags each year. Like other stores, Macy's will sell their own branded totes. The reusable cotton tote bags for $3.95, with $1 going to the National Park Foundation. On April 26, the first 100 to 150 customers at every Macy's store will receive a free reusable tote bag.

Better news is that macys.com and bloomingdales.com, are ditching those annoying synthetic packing peanuts in favor of biodegradable packing materials made from raw ingredients such as potato starch. In another green move, company plans to put solar panals on more than 30 of their stores, many in California. Other retailers making similar moves recently include eLuxury, which has stopped printing paper catalogs and Nordstrom which has introduced environmentally-friendly packing materials.