David Jones junks Toombul lease to focus on Chermside outlet
High-end department store giant David Jones Ltd (ASX: DJS) said on Monday that it would have an early exit from its Toombul Centre lease in Queensland in order to focus on the richly profitable Chermside store in the Westfield Shopping Centre, which is about five kilometres from Toombul.
The company said that an agreement with Centro Ltd has been reached for an early exit on its Toombul lease, which is set lapse on October 17 2012 though David Jones has notified Centro that the existing store would close shop in February next year.
David Jones chief executive Paul Zahra reiterated that the latest move is still consistent with the company's strategic focus on high value and high growth store outlets as he stressed that "profits that would have been generated from our Toombul store will be captured as we transfer David Jones customers to our Chermside store"
Mr Zahra explained that more profits would be realised due to the reduced operational cost as against to maintaining the Toombul store, pointing out that "our Chermside store generates more than double the sales of our Toombul store and has the scope to grow further."
David Jones assured all current Toombul employees that they will be retained by the company once the transfer has been completed, as reports said that the site to be vacated would be in turn occupied by discount department store Target.
The luxury retailer had earlier terminated its lease on a planned store in the suburban Melbourne mall in Fountain Gate, arguing that the site lacked sufficient wealthy clients for profitable business to thrive.