By STEPHANIE CLIFFORD

ATLANTA - After years of ownership by New York-based Macy’s, the old Rich’s stores are rediscovering their local roots. Macy’s is advancing a trend that is quickly being adopted by other big American retailers (like Saks Fifth Avenue and Best Buy).

For example, because its store here is in the top tenth of all Macy’s for hat sales, it has doubled the space and the sales of men’s hats. “The fedora’s real popular, because you see Ne-Yo in it,” said Leigh Ott, the store’s manager, referring to the rhythm and blues singer. “Our African- American customers, they like the fashion, they like what’s new.”

It is a lesson many companies overlooked as they rolled smaller stores into huge national brands, and headquarters mandated what all outlets should sell. And as many national retailers see sales decline, Macy’s chairman and chief executive, Terry J. Lundgren, said it is on track to add $1 billion in sales in 2010 from stores open more than a year. The retailer had $23.5 billion in sales in 2009. “We think about household income and population size, but I think it’s much more accurate to have people living in the marketplace tell you, ‘This is who’s shopping in my store,’ ” he said. Macy’s employees examine the local population almost like anthropologists.

The people responsible for merchandise assortment must visit stores daily, and Macy’s has added log s at each register where clerks enter shoppers’ suggestions . When many chains were at their height, shoppers tended to be middleclass white women. Now, they often are not. In Bellevue, Washington, for example, fewer than 4 percent of residents were Asian in 1980, when the Macy’s there was a Bon Marche.

The Asian population there now tops 23 percent. So the Bellevue Macy’s has added smaller sizes. It also added more precious gems to appeal to Indian customers, and doubled its sock department because of the many Microsoft visitors who travel and apparently forget their socks. (The company is based nearby.)

In Atlanta, localization looks entirely different. The store displays lowheeled black leather pumps, because Delta Air Lines, a major Atlanta employer, requires its flight attendants to wear them. And there are plenty of 32-liter stock pots (“for your Sunday church functions,” said Terry McDonald, a manager). Peter Sachse, chief marketing officer of Macy’s, said what makes this attempt at localization different has been the systematic collection of information.

“We never had the organizational structure in the field that was feeding back to us constantly,” he said. Still, for some shoppers, Macy’s will always be that New York store. “I don’t know what it was about the Bon,” said Maureen Haley, 54, of Washington . “It just seemed to have a more personal touch.”