With Myer’s profitability battered and share price languishing near all-time lows, DJs’ slide into administration raises an uncomfortable question
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When the retailer’s doors slide open, shoppers are greeted by rows of slashed price tags, frantic discounting, and all the other hallmarks of a department store closing down.
Except, this isn’t David Jones, the embattled upmarket retailer that is shutting half its 38 stores.
This is its longtime rival, Myer, where entire floors are seemingly permanently on sale.
With Myer’s profitability battered and share price languishing near all-time lows, DJs’ slide into administration raises an uncomfortable question: is Myer next?
At first glance, Myer’s headline numbers seem to defy the retail gloom, with double-digit sales growth to $4.1bn last financial year.
That lift, however, was not driven by surging demand, but by adding sales from the newly acquired apparel chains, Just Jeans, Jay Jays, Portmans, Dotti and Jacqui E, bought from billionaire businessman Solomon Lew’s Premier Investments.
Meanwhile, to keep registers ringing, Myer employed “higher than planned promotional activity to stimulate demand”, according to its annual report, which reduced its profitability.
The department store has also slashed the value of its brands, down more than $200m in one year alone, in an admission that its labels are worth far less…
