A History of Marketing / Episode 40
Long before giant balloons floated down Broadway* at the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, a remarkable young woman with a prosthetic eyeball developed the beginnings of the Macy’s brand in the 1860s.
Her name was Margaret Getchell. She was a marketing visionary who gave Macy’s its iconic red star logo, she captured customers’ imaginations with fantastical window displays, and she cemented the brand’s connection to the holiday season.
Even though she was the first female executive of Macy’s, Margaret Getchell’s contributions were largely lost to time. That was until Stephanie Forshee rediscovered Getchell’s story began the work of restoring her legacy.
Stephanie published Getchell’s belated obituary in the New York Times as part of their “Overlooked No More” series, and introduced her story to a new generation through her children’s book, Hidden Gems: Margaret Getchell LaForge, which is part of a series celebrating fierce females in business.
It’s an inspiring story that gave me new appreciation for the Macy’s brand. Now, here’s my conversation with Stephanie Forshee.
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Thank you to Xiaoying Feng, a Marketing Ph.D. Candidate at Syracuse, who volunteers to review and edit transcripts for accuracy and clarity.
Andrew Mitrak: Stephanie Forshee, welcome to A History of Marketing.
Stephanie Forshee: Thank you. Thank you for having me, Andrew. I’m excited to be here.
Andrew Mitrak: I’m so excited to speak with you and have a great conversation about the life and career of Margaret Getchell. That’s a name, Margaret Getchell, that I’m guessing a lot of listeners haven’t heard before. You’ve written a piece for The New York Times about Getchell, as well as a children’s book called Hidden Gems. So to start, how would you describe Margaret Getchell to someone who’s never heard of her before?
Stephanie Forshee: Yes, I think you’re correct that most people don’t know the name. Margaret Getchell was America’s first female retail executive. She worked for R.H. Macy & Co. during the 1860s and 1870s. She worked with the founder, Rowland Hussey Macy, who was a distant cousin of hers. She started with the company in 1860 as a cash clerk, worked her way up to head bookkeeper, and then made history in 1866 when she was named Superintendent of the store. That means she was the manager of the store, overseeing about 200 employees at that time, which would have been a big deal, of course.
Rediscovering a Retail Pioneer
Andrew Mitrak: As well as that managerial and executive experience, she had a lot of contributions to marketing that we will speak on as well. I’m just wondering, how did you first come across this story? When was the moment where you realized, “Wow, I need to help tell this story and make more people aware of Getchell?”
Stephanie Forshee: Early in the pandemic, very early on, when we were still in lockdown, March 2020, I was a business journalist at the time and enjoyed reading about businesses, particularly retail companies. I was nerding out on this book about the history of Macy’s. Within the first few chapters, there was information about Margaret Getchell and some of the early employees of the store. That’s when I learned she was supposedly America’s first female retail executive.
I had never heard the name, so I was very intrigued by her story. I was doing a little searching online, and I just thought maybe it was just my ignorance, silly me for not having heard of this woman, but I quickly realized that not a lot of people knew about her or had written about her. There was an encyclopedia.com entry about her and maybe two or three articles about her at the time. She was very uncovered in terms of what she deserved. I started researching her as much as I could and immediately became more and more intrigued by her story. I was very interested in the idea of uncovering information about this woman that very few people knew about. So that was exciting for me as well.
Andrew Mitrak: It’s always an exciting rush of a feeling when you discover somebody who has an interesting story and realize it is relatively uncovered. You think everything is covered on the internet, and it is surprising, of course, your book is called Hidden Gems, when there is more to be told here. I’ve experienced that myself, and it is a good rush.
Stephanie Forshee: Yes, I can definitely relate to that.
Andrew Mitrak: Your background is as a PR professional now, but you had been a reporter as well at some point, so telling stories was in your wheelhouse as well.
Stephanie Forshee: Yes, I was a business journalist for about 15 years and worked for various publications. I was always drawn to stories that were sort of off the beaten path. Finding Margaret fit into that narrative, even though it was something completely new to me—covering a historic figure and researching someone like this. That was a whole new process but used a lot of the same skills.
From Schoolteacher to Retail Executive
Andrew Mitrak: Let’s walk through some of Getchell’s career. To start, how did she get her job at Macy’s? You mentioned that Rowland Hussey Macy, the name of Macy, was a distant cousin of hers. Was that the initial connection for her to start work there?
Stephanie Forshee: Actually, they had not met at that point. She graduated high school at the age of 16. She was very skilled with numbers, so she became an arithmetic teacher for a school on Nantucket. Then she traveled to a couple of different cities in New Jersey and New York.
Years earlier, she suffered an eye injury. It was a freak accident playing a game of tag with her sister. It was a gory accident where she injured her eye. She didn’t immediately lose her vision, but it was deteriorating over the years. When she was 19 years old, she finally had surgery to have her eye removed and replaced with a prosthetic eye. It is one of those incidents that changed the trajectory of her life.
Andrew Mitrak: Just to pause on that—an eye injury. Today that seems gruesome, but in the 1840s or 1850s, just thinking of what eye surgery was probably like back then... there were probably not the same types of anesthesia or processes. It seems like a really horrific, traumatic, formational experience.
Stephanie Forshee: I agree. That is something I’ve been researching the past few years—what that would have been like, that time versus today. You’re right, it is not something that anyone would want to endure. But it did shape her as a person and was something she had to deal with.
So, when she was 19, she underwent this surgery. This was early in the summer of 1860. As she was recovering, the doctor recommended she should consider a change in career. She had been a school teacher at that point, and he was saying that grading papers by candlelight things like that was probably not too great for her eye. That’s how the story goes. In hindsight, the doctor was probably suggesting, “You’re 19, you need to be married and go about your life.”
But she did take it into consideration to change her career. She had heard of her distant cousin Rowland Macy. They had both grown up, he was 20 years her senior, but they both were from the island of Nantucket. He was her distant cousin, even though they never met. She decided to apply there. The meeting went very well; she had an interview with him, she explained that she was skilled, so he hired her as a cash clerk to start, and she made her way up from there.
The Humble Beginnings of R.H. Macy & Co.
Andrew Mitrak: It’s funny that it all started because a doctor allegedly recommended this change in career. It’s funny tho, reading some of these old books, old biographies, how often doctors would recommend things like, “Go move out West” or “Go live near a lake.” Doctors don’t really prescribe that kind of treatment anymore. A lot of changes in medicine and doctors’ recommendations. Anyway, this may have been the starting point for her meeting with R.H. Macy. The meeting went well. Can you share a little more about R.H. Macy and about Macy, the department store itself in 1860? Obviously, I am guessing, it wasn’t the major brand that it later became. Where was it in its journey? Just started? Was a little more established? Where was it in its establishment?
Stephanie Forshee: At that time, the New York store was only two years old. Rowland had other ventures—he really had a lot riding on this because he’d opened stores in Massachusetts as well as California, and Wisconsin, and those just didn’t pan out the way he had hoped. He was not the “Merchant Prince” at that time as he came to be known later.
At that time, the store was on its way. Sales were okay; they were definitely growing and surviving. But when she came to the store, it was not a full-fledged department store by any means. It was a dry goods store. The advertising, the signs out front just said cloaks, millinery, silks, and gloves. They had select items, but it was just a small store. Over the years, it would expand greatly.
Andrew Mitrak: Can you paint a picture of that time for women in business? Was it common for somebody like Margaret, a young woman, she was 19 or 20 at this time, to get a job at a store, or was this unusual just to work in business at all as a young woman?
Stephanie Forshee: In New York, it would be pretty uncommon even just to have this job, much less what she would go on to accomplish. There were definitely women employed by the store, but it wasn’t that common at that point.
What is interesting is that she was from Nantucket, so she came in with all the confidence in the world. Nantucket, if you ever visit there or even read about it, they are very proud of its heritage and history. They were known as the whaling capital of the world at that point. Most of the men, the majority of them, were out on whaling voyages for months or years at a time. The women, just like in many times when men went to war, women had to run things. It was like that early on. In Nantucket, they were having to run the post office, the schools, and pretty much the whole town while men were away on these whaling voyages.
She would have grown up seeing that in her community. Roland, having that same perspective, knew that women were just as capable. So they were, in a way, in their own bubble thinking that women could do things and run businesses too. But to your point, that was not very common generally at that point. And that would be the 1860s, right before the war. So in the coming years, it would become more common.
The Origin of the Macy’s Red Star Logo
Andrew Mitrak: That’s really interesting. This connection to Nantucket, and you mentioned whaling, and this actually leads to one of the most iconic contributions that Margaret Getchell has was the Macy’s logo, which was a tattoo that R.H. Macy had, that was a whaling tattoo. Can you tell the story of the logo and how Margaret Getchell helped identify and create that?
Stephanie Forshee: She started out as the numbers person, accounting and bookkeeping, and gradually became a trusted confidant of Rowland Macy. She was constantly coming up with ideas. She would say that she liked to “put a bug in his ear” for different things.
One of her greatest contributions was the logo. She knew that he had a red star tattoo on his wrist. At the time, I think that he was actually kind of embarrassed by this tattoo or his past as a whaler; it wasn’t something that he was particularly proud of as he was trying to make a name for himself as a merchant in New York at that point. But she saw that and thought it would be a good idea to be an emblem or insignia for the store.
She decided to put the red star logo on their letterhead and on each individual price tag and for items within the store, which we will get back to that as well. Macy was one of the first to have fixed prices. Before that, it was all negotiating and haggling on prices. The fact that they had price tags on their individual items was innovative at that time. The other thing is that they put the red star on columns outside the store, which still stand today. The original Macy’s is actually at 14th Street and 6th Avenue; that predates the famous Herald Square location.
Andrew Mitrak: I use the word “logo” to describe this red star, but that is kind of an anachronism. It wouldn’t have been called a logo at the time. Logo is kind of a more common thing later. The red star emblem itself has been such an iconic part of Macy’s. Was that somewhat unusual for a company to adopt an emblem like that, or was that common or can you contextualize that decision for them?
Stephanie Forshee: I wouldn’t say that it was common. It would have been somewhat unusual, but not restore our business, a logo like this, but it did exist for sure. One of Macy’s earlier ventures, he was in Haverhill, Massachusetts and his logo used a rooster as an emblem at that time in some of the newspaper advertisements. So it wasn’t unheard of by any means, but at that time, they didn’t think it was a “must-have” for a business.
Andrew Mitrak: That’s right. If I were to think of them at the time, I haven’t studied this deeply, a lot of them tend to be much more ornate and much more detailed than have the names as part of it and it’s hard to remember. The red star logo or just a star itself, is such an instantly recognizable, simple type of emblem. You can see that Macy sort of wants to use it in different ways, where they’d like to use typography, and it kind of gave them some more flexibility on how to use it. So it seems like a really good decision as a logo and you couldn’t just do a star today cause it seems like so widely overuse. Also, it’s also claimed by Macy as a thing. It seems like it was a really good, prescient thing for Margaret Getchell to notice, latch onto, and embrace as well.
Stephanie Forshee: Yes, at the time I think it was just a great idea that she had. To your point, the simplicity of it is what really stuck with people. As you know, it is still the logo today, so it must have been a success.
Innovative Marketing Stunts and Store Layouts
Andrew Mitrak: Let’s talk about some of her other contributions to Macy’s, specifically around things like placement and displays. Do you have any favorite examples of her other contributions—clever tactics to help increase sales and attract customers?
Stephanie Forshee: She loved thinking different innovations for the store. She was constantly coming up with ideas for different departments. It was her idea to introduce the toy department and the book department; at that time, it would be a bigger draw than today. Unfortunately, Macy’s doesn’t have a ton of books in its stores today.
She always came up with new ideas for new merchandise. One of my favorite examples of Margaret’s innovations is that she loved a good publicity stunt. One of the things she did was bring cats into the store. She dressed them up in baby doll clothes and put them in little carriages, or prams as they were called back then. She put those in the window display. I’m sure passersby were wondering, “What on earth is going on?”
They were so intrigued and enchanted by these cats. So many people came into the store that day, and they had record sales selling all these baby doll clothes, different accessories, and the dolls themselves of course. That was just one example of creative, out-of-the-box thinking.
Andrew Mitrak: Just to comment on this cat thing, and it’s so funny when I read this. I’ve been to a few conferences where everybody has booths in these conferences, and it’s almost like a window display, and you want people to come to your booth. A thing that sometimes people will do is bring puppies. “Oh, we got puppies! Come play with puppies and hear about our company software, B2B SaaS product.” People will be like, “Oh my gosh, that’s so innovative. They got puppies there.” This is kind of just a riff on something that Margaret Getchell did 150-plus years ago. So it’s funny that sometimes, like these tactics that they can be from the past, but still see kernels of that almost today as well.
Stephanie Forshee: Yes, I can only imagine this within the children’s department at that time, just hanging out with all the cats.
Andrew Mitrak: In addition to cats, any other favorites of yours?
Stephanie Forshee: Macy’s had a lot of ideas, and a lot of the New York department stores were following the lead of European department stores. Soda fountains were becoming all the rage. It would have been the late 1860s and the early 1870s. When they were becoming popular, Margaret knew that they needed a soda fountain at Macy’s. Her idea was to place it towards the back of the store so that customers would be eyeing other items as they were walking back and forth to the soda fountain. That is something that we know most stores do today, but at the time, it was a grand idea.
Andrew Mitrak: Totally. Today, I think of grocery stores—essential products like milk are almost always at the back of the store. It’s the thing that expires, the thing you often need a refill of. Just thinking of, “What is the thing that will attract people in? How do I make them exposed to more of the products and merchandise within our store to increase sales?” Super clever.
The ‘Customer-Obsessed’ Philosophy
Andrew Mitrak: She had this motto: “Be everywhere, do everything, and never forget to astonish the customer.” Do you have a sense of how she actually used that motto? Was it something she wrote down? Was it something she said to her employees? How did that motto manifest?
Stephanie Forshee: It’s not exactly clear. It must have come up because many employees said that she had embraced this motto. I would imagine she used it in training, perhaps with the cash girls. I have mixed feelings about the motto. “Be everywhere, do everything”—it is true, if you want to astonish the customer, you do have to do those things. But I think she, as well as Rowland Macy and leadership within the store, were maybe workaholics for sure. From everything I read about them.
Andrew Mitrak: To me, it has echoes of Amazon. I am in Seattle, and so Amazon is a big company– It’s a big company everywhere, but it’s one that’s so close to my home– and it sounds a lot like Jeff Bezos. He has this idea of customer obsession, and that’s in their culture. And of course, they are the everything store and so “Be everywhere, do everything, never forget to astonish the customer” seems like it echoes Amazon. And at the time, Macy’s was selling books and all sorts of goods, they were being an everything-type of store.
Stephanie Forshee: That’s a great parallel. They definitely took the customer obsession very seriously.
Establishing the Holiday Shopping Season
Andrew Mitrak: I want to ask you about one more famous contribution she had: convincing Macy’s to have the store open on Christmas Eve. I think this was in 1868. Now Macy’s is so associated with the Christmas holiday and Thanksgiving through Christmas season. Can you just share a bit about this decision and the impact that had?
Stephanie Forshee: At that time, she was wanting the store to stay open late. It started out on Christmas Eve and would later turn into the entire month of December, staying open late because, as we know, there are lots of last-minute shoppers. She knew that was an opportunity for the store to make more money if they would stay open late. They did, and they had record sales that day. It’s one of those things that today, in hindsight, some people who are working on Christmas Eve and throughout the Thanksgiving holiday might not love Margaret’s grand idea.
Andrew Mitrak: There is a trade-off on your priority stack: do you prioritize the customer or your employees? It seems like that trade-off was for the customer at the expense of some of the employees who have to work longer hours as a result.
Leadership Changes and Unfair Compensation
Andrew Mitrak: Getchell is a pioneer in the business world and she is a pioneer of reaching the glass ceiling at Macy’s. She was promoted to Superintendent, she became second-in-command to Macy himself. But as Macy’s the brand grows, she becomes overlooked. Her time there was super impactful but relatively short, and was not a multi-decade career there. Why do you think it was that she became overlooked?
Stephanie Forshee: There are a few things. We haven’t talked about her husband yet, but she did meet her husband, Abiel LaForge, at Macy’s. She was introduced to him through Rowland. He had been a soldier during the Civil War and met Rowland Macy’s son, helping him out. He became a close, trusted person of the Macy’s family. Abiel eventually comes to work for Macy’s years after Margaret started.
He was very dedicated to the company, for sure, but he was not coming up with all these innovations and he was not giving the same type of contribution as Margaret. In 1872, Rowland Macy is thinking about future partners of the firm—what’s going to happen if he retires or passes away. He is looking at successors. For some reason, Margaret is completely overlooked in this equation. As much as she was given opportunities before and for the year prior, at this point, Rowland, he did choose Abiel LaForge, as well as one of Macy’s nephews, Robert Valentine. There is no exact reason given. I think simply because she was a woman. At that time, he gave her a lot of opportunities, but it seemed like there was a limit there.
Andrew Mitrak: As an aside, she does marry Abiel LaForge. I’ve referred to her as Margaret Getchell, but her full name is Margaret Getchell LaForge, and it does seem like they’re kind of almost both used. I know your book is Margaret Getchell LaForge, but the New York Times’ piece just calls her Margaret Getchell. I wasn’t quite sure which name to use. Do I use LaForge or not?
Stephanie Forshee: Yes, so they were married in 1869 and she did take his name. But I think that some people who would just say Margaret Getchell is because most of her contributions really to the store were before her married life. So it was out of respect for that.
Andrew Mitrak: I’m going to quote from your New York Times article: “In fact, after her husband became a partner, her compensation was eliminated and she gradually stepped away from her work to care for her children. Having a husband who owned a stake in the business was considered sufficient, as he would support the family with his earnings.” It sounds like her compensation was eliminated before her job was eliminated. To all these points of Macy being tough on employees, that seems really unfair.
Stephanie Forshee: When you think about it today, it is unbelievable. You can’t really think of someone not being paid for their job. In a lot of ways, Margaret was ahead of her time. She not only worked when she was married, but she worked through her pregnancies as well. That was really unheard of. She would have already had two children by 1872. When her husband was named a partner, but at that time, that was when her compensation was taken away. With Abiel being a partner in the store, everything was going to be the same pot of money, if you will.
Andrew Mitrak: It sounds like that period from 1860 through the end of that decade, she really was full-time Superintendent, rising the ranks, having astonishing contributions. Then from 1870 onwards, it becomes a little less formal.
A Legacy Cut Short
Andrew Mitrak: You mentioned that R.H. Macy had been doing succession planning in the 1870s. It is important that he was, because there are a series of tragic endings in a short period of time. R.H. Macy died in 1877, age 54. Then Abiel LaForge dies a year after that in 1878. And then sadly, Margaret Getchell dies in 1880 at 38 years old. Is there anything you’d want to share about her final years?
Stephanie Forshee: It is really sad to think, she accomplished so much in the business world and started her own family. For anyone to pass away at 38 is devastating. The fact that she lost the two men she was closest to in her life—her employer, that she grew so close to and her husband—those few final years were extremely hard for her. She had some health issues, things like nerves pain and chronic pain. She ultimately passed away from a combination of heart failure and ovarian issues. As far as I know, it would have been ovarian cancer, though at that time they didn’t exactly know how to treat that. Those final years were definitely marked by tragedy.
Andrew Mitrak: It also seems like, certainly tragic on a personal level, but for Macy’s the company, it leaves a leadership vacuum. The steward of the brand and marketing innovation is gone. The founder is gone. Abiel, considered one of the potential successors, is also gone. Who takes the reins at Macy’s, and do any of Getchell’s innovations survive this transition?
Stephanie Forshee: A few people stepped in temporarily because it was a very quick succession with Macy and Abiel LaForge dying the next year, and even Valentine. When Macy passed away, Margaret’s husband Abiel and Robert Valentine had intended to and filed paperwork to rename the store “LaForge & Valentine.” So in some way, it is crazy to think of now because of all the tragedies that happened, because they passed away, the store was never renamed. It’s crazy to think that it would have been a completely different name.
A few people stepped in temporarily over those next few years. Over the next decade, it was a shorter tenure. It was the Straus family who would eventually become in charge of the store for decades and innovate even further in the coming years throughout the early 1900s.
In terms of her innovations and contributions to the store, surviving her legacy, I think in many ways they did. When Macy hired Margaret, because she had been so successful, that encouraged him to hire many more women and promote them to leadership roles. Even though, they didn’t quite get to the level that Margaret did—there were managers and head buyers—but the next Superintendent or two were not female. But there were some positives to come from that.
The Enduring Spirit of Innovation
Andrew Mitrak: It wasn’t until decades later in 1924 that Macy’s launched the Thanksgiving Day Parade, which is probably its most famous marketing event. Getchell obviously wasn’t alive to see it, but do you see any of her fingerprints on this event?
Stephanie Forshee: In some ways, yes. There is nothing you can directly link to say she had the idea for a parade, but just the fact that she was constantly innovating and encouraging others to share their ideas. I think she would be in favor of it and definitely proud that Macy’s came up with this idea and was able to pull it off in a way they have. To see it today, I’m sure she would be very pleased.
Lessons from Margaret Getchell’s Life
Andrew Mitrak: Wrapping up, as you reflect on Margaret Getchell’s life and work and you spent a lot of time on her biography, are there any top lessons that you’ve taken away? Are there ways you’ve applied her “astonish the customer” philosophy, or other ways you take her lesson to your own professional life as a marketer and PR professional?
Stephanie Forshee: Absolutely. I think of that all the time. I feel inspired by her. I have been writing for the sake of other people knowing her name and learning from her, but I feel very lucky to have been the person to follow her journey and research her over the past few years. The “astonish the customer” philosophy—I am constantly thinking of that.
I also put myself in her shoes a lot. I don’t know this for sure because it’s not something she wrote in her diary. I think she must have faced some forms of imposter syndrome or having doubts, being one of the only female leaders. I put myself in her shoes a lot thinking, “Okay, if she can do it, I can do it.” Those are the things that encourage and inspire me.
Andrew Mitrak: That’s a really inspiring lesson to wrap up on. Stephanie Forshee, thanks so much for joining. I’ll be sure to post links to your piece in The New York Times as well as your book Hidden Gems in the blog post. Stephanie, I’ve really enjoyed the conversation. Thanks so much for joining me and sharing about the astonishing career of Margaret Getchell LaForge.
Stephanie Forshee: Thank you so much. Thanks for having me, Andrew. It was great.
*Footnote: In the intro, I mention balloons floating down Broadway. While the parade famously followed Broadway for decades, the route changed in 2009. Today, the balloons float down 6th Avenue, though they still end at Macy’s flagship store on Broadway & 34th.
