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Opinion
Virginia Postrel

Now's the Time for Big-Box Stores to Embrace the 19th Century

Macy’s and its competitors weren’t always dull places to buy things less efficiently than you can online or in catalogs.
Shopping for a new business strategy.

Shopping for a new business strategy.

Photographer: Stefano Bianchetti/Corbis via Getty Images

If you’d told me back in 1984 that in 2017 we’d be talking about the collapse of Macy’s in particular and department stores in general, I’d have been shocked.

I really didn’t expect them to last this long.