The fashion category has emerged as one of the few bright spots in the latest sales figures for department store David Jones.
The company, which recently celebrated its 175 year anniversary, has confirmed a drop in total sales revenue of 1.4 per cent, for the second quarter of the 2013 financial year.
Total sales revenue for the period was $590.1 million, compared to a total sales revenue of $598.5 million for the previous corresponding period. Total sales revenue on a like-for-like basis was also down 1.4 per cent for the second quarter of 2013.
Total sales revenue and like-for-like figures for the first half of 2013 were also down, 0.7 per cent to $1005.7 million, compared to the same period in 2012 ($1012.9 million).
Commenting on the results, David Jones CEO and managing director Paul Zahra said that despite the dip overall, the fashion and beauty categories performed best.
"We are pleased with the performance of our high margin fashion and beauty categories, which delivered sales growth in second quarter of 2013 and and first half of 2013,” he said.
“Our sales performance during this period was however adversely impacted by our home categories, in particular electronics, which continued to be challenging and subject to ongoing deflationary pressure.”
As a result, Zahra said that, going
forward, the company focus will be on improving the profitability of
sales and “exiting the low performing categories of DVDs, music,
and games”.
“We also continue to reduce the depth and
breadth of our promotional discounting events and continue to work on
changing our category mix to increase focus on higher margin
categories,” he said.