FAO Schwartz: Coming to a Macy's near you

It looks like FAO Schwartz will become a leased department within Macy's stores:

Macy’s announced this morning that it will open FAO Schwarz stores in up to 275 Macy’s stores this fall, and will expand the FAO boutiques to all 685 Macy’s stores that sell children’s clothing in the next two years.

There was an FAO Schwartz department in Macy's State Street store here in Chicago last Christmas season as a trial. Apparently it worked well enough to be rolled out across the chain.

My opinion generally is that combining two faltering brands (e.g., Sears-Kmart) does nothing for either of them, but I'm wrong a pretty good percentage of the time, so we'll just have to wait and see.