It’s been a challenging year for Myer as the pandemic heavily reduced foot traffic in the prestige department store chain’s network, particularly in major CBDs.
The company has reported an incremental increase of 5.5 per cent in total sales for its FY21 to $2.658 million – down from $3 billion in 2019.
On the bright side, Myer returned to profitability for the first time since 2016 and online sales soared 27.7 per cent to $539 million over the period, representing 20.3 per cent of overall sales.
Beauty and homewares were the e-commerce standouts, soaring 218 per cent and 177 per cent, respectively, over the full year.
Myer will continue to focus on online growth for the current fiscal year and has its corporate eye on reaching a target of $1 billion in annual e-commerce sales over the next few years.
In August 2020, the company inked a multi-year deal with Australia Post to provide warehousing and online fulfillment servers to further enhance the online experience for its customers.
CEO John King attributes Myer’s latest results to the hard work of his team. “We are starting to see the business thrive despite the extraordinary market conditions. Our significantly improved FY21 results, including growth in profitability for both the first and second half, demonstrates the Customer First Plan is getting real traction.
“Despite the on again/ off again nature of physical retail over FY21, when combined with continued growth in the online business, we delivered solid sales growth when not impacted by lockdowns, particularly in H2 21.”