Gennette said Macy's has a couple of winning formulas that work in makeup.

One is a capital-investment, heavy gondola-type system whereby customers can pick up makeup off a shelf or pegboard rather than having an associate show them a sample from behind a counter. He said it's a "millennial-based, color-based portfolio, and so we've used our impulse strategy basically to deliver that."

Competitors such as Sephora and Ulta Beauty

, both wildly popular with millennials, use the gondola system Gennette pointed out. Macy's itself employs it with its recently acquired BlueMercury brand, which makes selling more "customer-centric" than "brand-centric."

Macy's has recently tested its shoe-selling strategy to a similar arrangement so that customers can choose shoes off a rack, rather than have a sales rep fetch them from the backroom.

"We're looking right now to say, what are new models by which there could be more of a mash-up of open sell versus assisted sell? What does that look like?" he added.

Gennette said the company has developed a beauty task force with Estee Lauder

that is exploring new ways to sell products.