Myer

Myer's origins trace to 1900, when Sidney Myer and his brother opened a draper's shop in Bendigo, a regional Victorian goldfields town. After that early partnership dissolved, Sidney moved into Melbourne in 1911, buying the existing drapery business of Wright & Neil on Bourke Street. He built the business through retail methods that were unusual for the period - openly displaying merchandise for customers to browse rather than keeping stock behind a counter - and by 1914 had opened the eight-story Myer Emporium, modeled explicitly on San Francisco's department store, the Emporium.

Between 1911 and 1934, Myer acquired or built ten separate buildings along Bourke Street to expand the flagship footprint, consolidating what became the company's signature store. From that Melbourne base the company expanded into every Australian state, making it the only department-store chain with a presence in all of them. The Bourke Street building remains the group's flagship location today, spread across multiple floors with dedicated departments, cafes and an events hall, and is recognized on the Victorian Heritage Database as the former Myer Emporium.