Myer boss Olivia Wirth puts Christmas on ‘steroids’ to tempt shoppers to open their wallets

Myer boss Olivia Wirth says it’s putting its Christmas offerings on “steroids” in a bid to entice shoppers to splash cash ahead of the all-important holiday trading period.

The department store giant has launched its annual Christmas Giftorium pop-up at its flagship stores in Perth, Melbourne and Sydney, providing customers a one-stop shop for holiday decorations and gifting. And Ms Wirth is promising to have something for everyone across all categories.

“We are absolutely taking Christmas to the extreme,” she told The Nightly.

“You want your Christmas to be beachy and blue, you’ve got it. You want your Christmas to be pink and sparkly, you’ve got it.

“There’s 650,000 individual hanging decorations, this is an extreme sport at Myer. We’re really going all out.”

Last year, Myer extended Giftorium at its Melbourne City store across the entire basement floor, which Ms Wirth said “traded incredibly well for us”.

“We’re taking those lessons, we’re expanding it into Sydney and we’re expanding into Perth, and we’re just going to keep doing this year-on-year. How can we continue to improve through pop-ups, how we can bring newness and how we can make it easy for our customers,” she said.

“Christmas can also be really stressful for shoppers so this is all about making it easy, bringing new things to market that they won’t have seen before and making sure that we can have an offering which is easy to shop all in one place.”

As rising cost-of-living pressures weigh on spending, retailers will have to pull out all the stops to entice shoppers to open their wallets during the peak Christmas period, when many make up to two-thirds of their annual profits.

The Reserve Bank last week delivered its fourth interest rate hike of the year and economists expect another in November ahead of the key Black Friday and Christmas trading periods. This would take the cash rate to an 18-year-high of 4.85 per cent.

Consumers are also facing higher fuel prices and a downturn in the property market.

But Ms Wirth is confident Myer can still appeal to shoppers despite those cost pressures.

“Newness is really important. Everyone loves adding a new bauble or a new garland every year, so how can we make sure that we have the option there regardless of your taste,” she said.

“And then how do we make gifting easy? So if he’s shopping for his wife and he’s bringing his kids along to shop for the festive season, how do we make it easy for gifting? That might be in the beauty area with packages around fragrances.”

Shoppers can also get personalised pyjamas and chocolate bars, have their presents gift-wrapped and meet Santa at Myer’s “Santaland”.

Ms Wirth said Christmas was an all-year-round activity at Myer, with the retailer starting 14 months out to figure out the trends for the upcoming holiday season.

“This year, it’s all going to be about copper, gold, glitter. There’s also some natural texture that’s coming through,” she said.

“The team get really creative with this. They look around the world, have a look at what the trends are, what the customers are talking about online.

“It’s all about picking the theme, working out what’s going to be hot and then making sure that we’ve got a full spread that goes from trees to baubles to beading to wreaths, but also through to home.”

Ms Wirth was tight-lipped about this year’s theme for its long-running Christmas window at Myer Bourke Street. First unveiled in 1956, the department store’s Christmas windows have been an annual fixture for generations of Victorian families.

This year’s theme is set to be unveiled in November.