The heavy discounting offered over the Christmas period will continue into the new year but isn’t expected to eat into the retailer’s margins, said Myer chief executive officer Bernie Brookes.
Brookes said Myer’s sales for the month of December were dragged down by the electrical and entertainment goods categories.
Those categories had received a boost in December 2008 as consumers used up handouts from the federal government’s fiscal stimulus package.
“Those were the only areas of the store that were down for the half and in December. They were the ones directly impacted by the stimulus,” Brookes explained.
“It would have been a very normal, if not good, Christmas had it not been for the one impact of the stimulus.”
He flagged the retailer would continue to discount deeply over the next six months.
“We decided to invest in some more aggressive activity to drive top line revenue and we’ll do that again over the next six months,” he said.
