Online auction firm gives Macy’s building ‘second chance’
Courtesy of M@C Discount
M@C Discount occupies the former Macy’s department store location at Washington Crown Center.
Courtesy of M@C Discount
Employees process goods at M@C Discount in Washington Crown Center.
Courtesy of M@C Discount
M@C Discount, an online bidding auction company, sells items that have been returned to big-box stores and to Amazon like exercise equipment, lawn mowers, furniture, sporting goods, clothing, mattresses and other goods.
Attention, local shoppers … you may find deals, maybe steals, at the old Macy’s department store at Washington Crown Center.
Only it is no longer a Macy’s store, which the big-box chain shuttered in 2018. M@C Discount, an online bidding auction company, moved into the space in January – relocating from South College Street in Washington.
The company is storing and displaying “second-chance” merchandise at the former Macy’s, and at six other locations.
The available items, generally, have been returned to big-box stores and to Amazon, and include exercise equipment, lawn mowers, furniture, sporting goods, clothing, mattresses … anything but a caveman’s club. There also are pallets of general merchandise.
Would-be customers visit mac.bid to see what is available at those sites, bid on products by a specified date and time, and pick up if they “win.”
“You can get 70 to 80% off retail,” said Kellen Campbell, who launched the company in 2018 with co-owner Shawn Allen. “We have to process fast, market fast and sell fast.”
At about 150,000 square feet, the Crown Center facility is the company’s second most spacious, behind Pittsburgh Mills Circle in the Allegheny Valley (160,000). Each location has a company-high 85 employees.
The other sites are in Beaver Falls, Butler, McKees Rocks, Boardman, Ohio, and Spartanburg, S.C. – all of which are operating under five-year leases. M@C also plans to launch a location in Monroeville.
Companywide, M@C Discount has 440 employees and more than 700,000 square feet of usable space.
All seven structures are “second-chance” entities as well. Six were previously unused spaces, some of them warehouses. Providing jobs and reviving buildings provide boosts to local communities.
M@C Discount is the brainchild of two University of Pittsburgh graduates, one of whom – Campbell – is a former Panthers fullback out of West Allegheny High School. Both have been carrying the ball, though.
The two gathered about a half-dozen years ago, pondering the possibility of embarking on a business similar to the one they now run. They looked at what similar companies were doing, but held off.
“No one in Southwestern Pennsylvania was doing this at the time,” Campbell said. “We thought about doing something like this, but the time wasn’t right.”
They decided the time was right in 2017. “We developed a business plan, applied for all the business licenses and looked at warehouses,” Campbell said. They found one during the Christmas season, a 5,000-square-foot space near Washington & Jefferson College. M@C was in business.
Although the company made its first dollars there, Campbell does not regret leaving the warehouse and its lack of ambiance. “It was in rough shape – and it was ugly,” he said. “I had told Shawn, ‘This is the place. It was the place because it was cheap.'”
He is pleased to be in the old Macy’s, which underwent renovations, including removal of walls. There is ample space – the building was large enough to accommodate two docks and the addition of a third.
The building also is in a convenient location – near Interstates 70 and 79 and two major arteries, Routes 19 and 40.
Macy’s is no longer a department store, but it is getting a second chance.