Story, Retail’s Latest Hot Thing, Simply Puts A New Coat Of Paint On An Old And Widespread Model

Recently, when Macy’s bought Story – the uber-trendy specialty retailer whose model is to turn over its retail space to sponsoring vendors for six-week runs – the world of retailing was all agog (assuming people still get agog these days). There weren’t a lot of specifics about how the Macy’s-Story mashup would work, but presumably the latter would bring some of its limited edition pop-up-shop merchandising savvy to the former, generally presumed to be a good thing for all parties. Department stores like Macy’s have tried for … well, pretty much forever to speed up their merchandising cycles and rotate in new goods much, much faster than they currently do. Story does exactly that. Every four to eight weeks, it does a top-to-bottom reset of its single store in the Meatpacking District in Manhattan, totally transforming the space with a coherent theme — a story, if you will. The runs have a sponsor that, according to published reports, pays anywhere between $600,000 and $1 million for the privilege. Read more at Forbes.