On a recent trip to Australia we looked at the potential opportunity for David Jones to expand into food retail. We engaged with food suppliers in Australia to get their views of the prospects for a new premium food retail chain. We find that there may be scope for such a venture, but note the size of the market opportunity may be limited and the ability to pass on additional cost in product pricing may be constrained.
We also evaluated the latest merchandise range of Country Road with the help of two Australian fashion stylists, to see if the issues which contributed to its recent poor performance have been addressed.