Sidney Myer - Career

Career

Sidney and Elcon Myer both worked in Slutzkin's underclothing business in Flinders Lane, Melbourne; later they established a small drapery shop in Bendigo. This not proving very successful, Sidney Myer took his goods, stockings, laces, etc., from door to door, and, in spite of knowing little English, sold his wares. He then bought a cart and travelled through country towns. The business was later moved to Pall Mall, Bendigo, where it prospered, other shops were added, and later the Bendigo business of Craig Williamson and Thomas was bought.

In 1911 Myer purchased the business of Wright and Neil, Drapers, in Bourke Street, near the General Post Office, and a new building was completed and opened in 1914. The Doveton woollen mills at Ballarat were purchased in 1918, and in 1921 a new building fronting on Post Office Place, was added at Melbourne. These became the Myer chain of department stores.

The Myer Emporium grew with the purchase of the old established businesses of Robertson & Moffat and Stephens & Sons. In 1925, Myer Ltd was listed on the Melbourne Stock Exchange and the new building on the Lonsdale Street frontage was begun. A separate building in Queensberry Street, Melbourne, was put up in 1928, and the Collins Street businesses of T. Webb and Sons, china importers, and W. H. Rocke and Company, house furnishers, were bought and transferred to the Bourke-street building. A public company had in the meantime been formed which by 1934 had a paid-up capital of nearly £2,500,000. A controlling interest in Marshall's Limited of Adelaide was also acquired. The company was then employing 5300 people with medical and nursing aid for the staff, and rest homes for them at the seaside and in the Dandenong Ranges.

Some of Myer's friends and business associates feared that the business was developing too fast, but the company was in a prosperous state and fast recovering from the effects of the depression, when Myer died suddenly on 5 September 1934, at age 56.