Former Macy’s CEO Terry J. Lundgren on Leadership and ‘Retail Excellence’

Terry J. Lundgren, the former chairman and chief executive officer of Macy’s Inc., was back in the limelight on Wednesday when he received the Retail Excellence Award from the Baker Retailing Center of the Wharton School of Business.

A crowd of more than 100 retail and brand executives, many of them industry veterans, came to help honor Lundgren, including Mindy Grossman, Geoffroy van Raemdonck, Tony Spring, Jill Granoff, Liz Rodbell, Panos Linardos, Gilbert Harrison, James Reinhart, Graziano de Boni, Fern Mallis, Joe Gromek, Adrienne Lazarus, Stacey Bendet and Federica Marchionni.

“I learned immensely from Terry and have a deep respect for him,” said Matt Shay, chief executive officer of the National Retail Federation, where Lundgren served as chairman twice, and as a board member. He was instrumental in recruiting Shay to run the NRF.

In introducing Lundgren to the crowd, Shay cited several of Lundgren’s accomplishments while running Macy’s, among them the merger with the May Department Stores, launching My Macy’s localization, and backing early investments into e-commerce. “He had this ability to continue to innovate, reimagine and operate with curiosity.” Shay also recalled the time when Lundgren popped open a bottle of Champagne and cork flew in the direction of Shay and hit him in the head.

“Wow,” Lundgren said upon accepting the award from Tom Robertson, a professor of marketing at Wharton.

Lundgren spoke about leadership and teamwork, but not before managing one quip. “You know what the five most important words in public speaking are — be brief, baby, be brief.” Indeed he was, saying, “The most critical characteristic of good leadership is recognizing that you do not have all the answers and to be good at surrounding yourself with people who do have the all the answers.”

Good leadership, Lundgren added, “takes a full team and the ability to engage them.” At Macy’s, he said, “The team we had was the Yankees, an outstanding organization in every position. We had bumps in the road but we overcame them.”

Also speaking was Jay Baker, who was part of the central management team of Kohl’s putting that chain on meteoric growth primarily in the 1990s, and later, along with wife Patty, established Wharton’s Baker Retailing Center. Baker noted that Lundgren is a University of Arizona alumnus, where he established scholarships for the students and has long been an active supporter of the university, which honored him in 2005 by naming its retailing center the Terry J. Lundgren Center for Retailing. But as Baker mentioned, between his involvement with Wharton, Lundgren’s involvement with the University of Arizona, both “We’re not competing, we are collaborating.”

Lundgren began his career in 1975 as a trainee with Bullock’s, a division of Federated, which eventually was taken over by Macy’s. Over the next decade, he held positions of increasing responsibility in buying, store management, human resources and senior-level store management and merchandising slots. He joined Neiman Marcus as executive vice president but soon became chairman and CEO, then, in April 1994, returned to Federated as chairman and CEO of its merchandising group before rising to president and, ultimately, CEO and chairman for 14 years. Lundgren retired as executive chairman of Macy’s in 2018.

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