Down-Under Macy's

The Macy's of Australia is a seven-story sandstone department store that sprawls over two blocks in the heart of Melbourne. The Myer Emporium is Australia's top store, the world's sixth largest, and the major link in the biggest retailing chain below the equator. More than 1,250,000 customers a week pour through its doors and onto its 54 elevators and 32 escalators, and thousands more shop at its 27 branches, which are placed in every state except Western Australia. Myer's has no equivalent of Gimbels to keep it on its toes, but it does not seem to have suffered from that vacuum. Last week Myer's, whose 1963 sales were nearly $300 million, announced plans to build a $20 million, 51-acre American-style shopping center in the Melbourne suburbs.

Outraged Competitors. Myer's has 50-odd subsidiaries, including car parks, garages, furniture and woolen mills and shopping centers, but it has grown and prospered because of its over-the-counter rapport with the Australian shopper. Most of its 19,500 employees attend training school, learn to address customers by name when possible instead of by the formal "sir" or "madam." Myer's departments compete with each other to bring the customers bargains, and its basement frequently carries the same merchandise as upstairs at lower prices. When merchandise does not move on a strict timetable, Myer's either knocks the price down or clears the goods from its counters.

Australian retailing was still in the Middle Ages when such practices were first introduced to Aussie shoppers by Sidney Myer, a penniless Russian Jew who emigrated to Australia in 1905 and began to hawk merchandise from his back, not far from Melbourne. He moved up to a pushcart, then to a rented store, and by 1911 had amassed enough money to buy a small general store in Melbourne--right on the present site of Myer's. He quickly became the city's most successful businessman, outraging competitors by such novel practices as introducing "price leaders" to attract customers, ordering his salesgirls to don hats and crowd around neglected bargain counters. Before he died in 1934, he had begun establishing branch stores in other Australian cities and had foresightedly picked his successor: Myer's current boss, Arnot ("Harry") Tolley, 68.

Steady Steering. A quiet, gentle executive, Tolley sees himself as "a man with an oil can whose job is to keep all parts of the machine running smoothly." He has done just that, shrewdly acquiring other companies, setting up buying companies in four foreign countries and agents in four others, and steadily expanding Myer's network. He has ignored chances to open specialty stores, steadily steered Myer's toward the volume market. "There's no future in catering to a so-called elite," Tolley says. "Aim at the broad middle section of the population and you automatically get both the top and bottom sections." Myer's not only has been good for the Australian shopper but for Australian industry as well: Tolley sees to it that of the thousands and thousands of items carried in Myer's stores, fully 90% are made in Australia.

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