Latinx Employee Resource Group Turned Focus Group

Outside the holiday season, Mother’s Day is the highest selling time of the entire year for the Handbag category; it’s even considered the “Black Friday” of the Spring season. I was tasked with creating a strategy to increase sales and grow market share for Macy’s Handbag Division during Mother’s Day.

Thinking About Your Diverse Customer’s Life

With US Mother’s Day taking place May Week 2, May Week 1 had become the primary selling period to capture Mother’s Day Sales. However, once we started thinking about our Latinx customer, we discovered that there were opportunities to grow sales throughout the entire month of May. The Latinx population represented 56% of the population growth from 2000 to 2010 and had become a growing population of the Macy’s core customer. We wanted to show this community that we not only valued their dollar, but their values and the things that are important to them.

In Mexico, El Salvador and Guatemala, Mother’s Day is celebrated on May 10th each year. While countries like Puerto Rico and Cuba, Chile, Colombia, Ecuador, Honduras, and Venezuela observe Mother’s Day on May’s second Sunday. And Spain, Paraguay, Bolivia, Nicaragua, and Dominican Republic celebrate between the 1st Sunday in May and the last Sunday. Many Spanish-speaking customers celebrated both the US Mother’s Day and their native country’s Mother’s Day.

Private Label Capsule As A Market Share Opportunity

The best way for a retailer to grow their share of the market is to have exclusive product that the customer cannot get anywhere else. Other than securing an exclusive brand launch, a retailer can achieve this by having quality and trend right private label product. We decided to utilize Macy’s Merchandising Group to create exclusive product that would appeal to the Mother’s Day gift-giver, especially the Latinx customer.

Employee Resource Group as a Focus Group

To ensure that this product was authentic and successful, we brought in Macy’s Latinx Employee Resource Group (ERG) to participate in the design process. The ERG conducted a survey among their member to give us insight on the type of product and price strategy that would represent Mother’s Day. From there the design team rendered sketches and CAD and the ERG participated in a focus group to review the product before production started. The partnership between the Private Label Design Team and the ERG allowed us to successfully create authentic product to reach a customer we hadn’t in the past.