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Produced and published by the School of Historical & Philosophical Studies, The University of Melbourne
Published July 2008
Published July 2008
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The forerunners of the department store in Australia were the general store, or universal provider, shops which provided for a wide range of household needs. The department store, however, elevated fashion, drapery and furnishings to a level of luxury and range which differentiated it from the everyday or rural emporium. Larger department stores also offered restaurants and even art galleries.
In Melbourne the name synonymous with department stores is Myer. Sidney Myer, a successful Bendigo draper, established the first of his Myer emporiums in Bourke Street, Melbourne, in 1911. Established initially as a discount department store, Myer rebuilt on an enlarged Bourke Street site, creating a department store modelled on San Francisco's 'Emporium'. For the next 60 years Myer was the keystone of central city retailing.
The first accurate statistical picture of the importance of department stores is in the 1948 retail census. In Victoria the 130 shops defined as department stores accounted for 10.3% of retail sales. In money terms they sold 30.3% of drapery, clothing and soft furnishings, 18.1% of hardware, ironmongery and crockery and 15.4% of furniture and floor coverings.
The postwar retail census coincided with some department stores taking leadership in fashion and popular taste. In 1946 and 1947, heralding the lifting of wartime austerity, Myer ran fashion shows in its Mural Hall with Parisian models and designs by Worth and Dior. They were gala occasions hosted by Norman Myer (Sidney's nephew), and were well featured in the Australian Women's Weekly and metropolitan newspapers. They put department stores and Central Melbourne at the forefront of metropolitan retailing (at a time when shoppers relied on the radial public transport network and private cars were in short supply). The Retail Traders' Association was run mostly by city drapers and department-store executives. Department stores were also among the first in early postwar years to modernise their premises with improved escalators and shop fittings.
The 1962 credit squeeze marked the beginning of the decline of the city department stores. Ball & Welch, Buckley & Nunn, Foy & Gibson, Georges, Hicks Atkinson, Mantons, Mutual Store, Paynes Bon Marche and Treadways were all gone by 1996, although Georges was unsuccessfully reborn in 1998 as a chic fashion/eatery place. Mantons was owned by the Manton family (including Jack Manton, art collector), and was taken over by G.J. Coles & Co. in 1955 and made Coles' number-one variety store at 200 Bourke Street. Foys was taken over by Cox Brothers in 1955 and its landmark building at the north-east corner of Swanston and Bourke Streets became a Woolworths Big-W store when Cox Brothers failed in 1961. Hicks Atkinson was over 100 years old when it disappeared in the Reid Murray collapse in 1963; Paynes was also a Reid Murray casualty.
In 1960 Myer opened a new department store at Chadstone shopping centre, Melbourne's first large free-standing shopping mall. At the time the only other large suburban department store was Read's Chapel Street, which later became Pran Central. Ever since Chadstone, the hallmark of free-standing centres has been the inclusion of a department store. David Jones has been Myer's regional competitor since the 1980s, beginning with its acquisition of Georges (1981) and Buckley & Nunn (1982). A third competitor for a period was Daimaru, at Melbourne Central (1991).
Department stores' market share has been greatly lessened with the advent of discount stores. Coles opened its first Kmart at East Burwood in 1969 and Myer opened the Target chain soon afterwards. In 1998 there were 23 metropolitan Kmarts, a Target store in place of Coles at 200 Bourke Street, and 21 suburban Target stores. Discount department stores and small chains effectively replaced Coles and Woolworths variety stores.
Since the late 1990s there has been talk of the death of the department store, perhaps provoked by the closure of the prestigious Georges. Certainly department stores had lost furniture (to bulky-goods strips such as at Nunawading), clothing to many specialty stores, and hardware and other lines to 'category killers'. But they continued to be viewed as anchor tenancies at regional shopping centres, and Myer repositioned itself in 1997 with enlarged departments for sporting and electronic goods and their New Year sales became major spending events for metropolitan shoppers. David Jones occupied an upmarket niche and Myer strove to regain a stronger position in general apparel.