I agree. It puts the remaining ~18 Glue stores (which I presume...

I agree.

It puts the remaining ~18 Glue stores (which I presume will be the best performing stores) and also the rest of the group on notice that they need to deliver on commitments, to support the investments we are making in expanding the business.

I imagine they will end up skewing to the premium destination centres, like Chadstone, and not the less attractive outer suburban malls which have strong base in non-discretionary food and electronics (phones and computers) that people have to have), but fillout the space with highly discretionary fashion apparel alongside low price mini-department stores like KMart and BigW which have low priced apparel and next-to-no no sales people on the floor. It is escapism to push a supermarket trolley past an apparel store, but I see few going inside, whereas you can push it through the wider ailes at BiG and KMart and buy some underwear and socks or a cheap set of pyjamas.

Someone else suggested that shoes are less likely to be deferred once they get scuffed or soles wear down, whereas apparel nornally does no wear out before it is tossed or given away to make space in somones's wardrobe for something fresh.

As a bloke I don't know much about womens' apparel, but I observe how my wife goes about managing her wardrobe space. She has a huge number of shoes just to get through the average day, whether that involves going out to church or say a hair appointment, less dressy locations like the supermarket, butcher and vegetable places, and woring around the house, or going for a walk which all demand a change of shoes. I expect that as time goes on the CEO and Board will get better at discerning up front the sites for apparel outlets.

Its been a buyers market for retail space so I assume they will manage the vacation of premises in an orderly way, as they are not in any sort of distress.

Overall I thought the trading update is indicative of modest growth in profit, albeit below CPI