"Home and electrical product categories continued to be challenging in the third quarter, while the best performers were womenswear, accessories, beauty and menswear, David Jones said."
Word to HQ - get the hell out of electrical product. Is there any margin left in that space? By all means stay with the luxury high end stuff with a small footprint (e.g. Apple gear, expensive noise-reduction headphones) but forget clogging up store space with big box electrical. Do it now.
Speaking of big box electrical, JB Hi Fi cannot be long for this world. I went into the Melb Elizabeth St store the other day and there isn't enough passing traffic to justify that much storespace for DVDs (hello internet streaming!) and audio accessories which I can get cheaper on Amazon.
As for David Jones I suspect it will eventually turnaround (hmmm 2012 and no internet presence - what a brilliant bit of strategic thinking that was) but there will be a year or two of poor results and heavy capex to contend with first. That said, Neiman Marcus in the US is a good example of how some dept stores can get it right.
DJS Price at posting:
$2.25 Sentiment: None Disclosure: Not Held
