Macy's will close 35 to 40 underperforming stores, the department store chain announced Tuesday.
The stores will be identified at a later date, said the company with corporate offices in Cincinnati and New York.
Annual sales volume at the stores, "net of sales expected to be retained in nearby stores and online," as the company puts it ina statement, is expected to be about $300 million. That would represent about 1 percent of toal Macy's sales, the company said.
Macy's has 770 Macy's stores. Over the past five years, 52 stores have been closed and 12 new ones opened, the company said.
Macy's CEO Terry Lundgren called brick-and-mortar stores "absolutely vital" to the brand.
"As new shopping centers are opened, however," he said in a statement, "many customers change their shopping habits and often the sales volume of a store gets divided among the new and nearby, existing centers. Each year, we prune some stores that are our weakest performers so that we can concentrate our resources on the best locations and maintain a strong physical presence."
At the same time the company opens a "small number" of new stores "to fill gaps in our market coverage or where we have outstanding real estate opportunities," he said.
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