Macy’s Inc. will continue its focus on omnichannel development by building a 1.3 million-square-foot direct-to-consumer fulfillment center near Owasso in Tulsa County, Oklahoma.
The company announced its plans for the facility Tuesday saying that the major new site would support continued sales growth driven by the company’s omnichannel strategy.
Macy’s is expected to invest upwards of $170 million to outfit the fulfillment center with the latest tech-savvy material handling equipment and warehouse management systems.
Terry J. Lundgren, Macy’s chairman, president and CEO said, “The rapid growth of Macy’s direct-to-customer shipments, rooted in our omnichannel approach to business, requires us to continue to strategically add fulfillment capacity so our customers can receive their orders quickly and efficiently. Customers today are shopping whenever, however and wherever they prefer — via stores, desktops and mobile devices — and we continue to invest to meet the customer demand.”
Macy’s has rolled out fulfillment capability to 500 stores across the nation and built three major fulfillment centers over the past seven years. Direct-to-consumer orders from macys.com, the company app and any placed in stores are currently handled by fulfillment centers in Goodyear, AZ; Portland, TN; and Martinsburg, WV and by those 500 stores with fulfillment functions.
The new Tulsa facility, Lundgren added, “will represent another significant expansion of our shipping capacity, particularly to customers in central and southern regions of the United States.”
Once fully operational, the Tulsa center will employ 1,500 full and part-time workers throughout the year and more temporary associates–at least 1,000–to handle the influx of online orders during the holiday season.
Construction on the facility is slated to begin in spring of 2014 with operations starting in April 2015 and first order shipping in the summer of that same year.