Article
    From Whaler to Retailer: How the Past
    Informs the Future
    By Celia Ann Rooney



   In his early teens, Rowland H. Macy signed aboard The Emily Morgan as a
cabin boy, and sailed away out of Nantucket, the biggest whaling port in the world at that
time. The ship itself was illfated in that it was lost at sea a few decades later. Rowland’s
great adventures on the ocean included a shipwreck which nearly caused Rowland to suffer
a similar fate. But there was a bright red star shining in the sky that night as he tread the
rough waters, and his focus on it and his prayers kept him barely afloat until rescue came.

  That red star he had tattooed on his forearm, and it became his symbol of hope and
hanging on for his ventures in later life. In those days, the mid- to late-1930’s, the whaling
industry was big business. “Blubber capitalism” fueled the economy and lit up cities and
towns around the world. Whale oil was like the petroleum of today. The whaling vessels
themselves were like floating factories and the men aboard them did far more than catch
the great mammals. Herman Melville’s great American novel, Moby-Dick, or: The Whale,
records for all time the massive undertaking of the dissection and rendering of the great
sperm whale. Nothing was wasted. Each portion and part was processed and preserved in
its own department.

  When Rowland came back to land, he started up several retail stores, each of which
failed. In 1849, he joined the young men going west to seek their sudden fortunes by
panning for gold in the hills of California. But he was unsuccessful in that effort as well and
returned to Massachusetts to begin again his retailing efforts. This time, Rowland Macy
decided to establish a store in New York. All of his experiences up to this point taught him
that you must follow the whale to where he swims if you wish to capture him and profit from
his oil. The capture itself requires sailors ready to fight and then the long steady process of
taking the products from the prodigious carcass of the whale. New York was a burgeoning
shopper’s paradise, and Rowland was ready to harpoon it.

  Macy set up on a shopper’s row in New York and set about the fight of distinguishing his
store from the others. He set his sights upon being the best and most convenient of
shopping experiences, with fair prices and guarantees. He selected for his symbol the red
star that still represents his store today. Convenience became embodied in the
departments that made “one-stop shopping” the wave of the future in retailing. Just as the
blubber, meat, bone, and other products of the whale were separated and contained in their
own areas on the whaling ships, Macy’s new operation brought people in and permitted
them to explore the variety and convenience of the departments of his new kind of store.

  We can learn a lot from studying how Rowland Macy became the successful retailing
genius he was meant to be. First, every experience we have teaches us something we can
use later in life. From his whaling experience and observations aboard the whaling
ship, Macy learned about organizing and orchestrating the details of a massive operation in
which everyone has a job to do and all must be coordinated together. Secondly, success is
neither automatic nor immediate. Rowland kept trying until he succeeded. Like Ahab’s
forays into to the sea after the great white whale, Rowland persisted until he achieved the
greatness he knew was in him. Third, Rowland’s new retail venture had an icon for success
built into it. When he selected for its symbol the red star which represented his successful
rescue from a stormy sea, Macy tapped into the hope and energetic optimism which had
been tattooed onto his very soul the night he was saved from the sea.

  Our own life experiences may not be as varied as someone who went from whaling to
panning for gold to owning a retail store. But we each have a storehouse of energy and
experience within us that remains for the most part untapped and unexplored. We need to
examine the life stories of successful people in the past, people like Rowland Macy, to
extract the nuggets of genius that lie within us. As we apply these lessons to our own minds
and experience, we may find that there is a goal or a vision we need to draw out and look at
in a whole new way. Success is often achieved through that process.

About the author: Celia Ann Rooney is a writer, teacher and attorney in Philadelphia and
is co-founder and chief financial officer of A New Success, LLC. She is the author of a
series of e-books devoted to self improvement and learning the principles of success
through study of the life stories of famous people, including Success Stories: the Science
and Art of Success, Success Stories II: Early Risers and Late Bloomers, and Success
Stories III: Success in Hard Times. Her books and articles are available on the website:
www.anewsuccess.com. You may contact her at: crooney@anewsuccess.com.
Home | Contact Us
Copyright © 2008 A New Success, LLC
"Nurture Your New Reality"