Department stores go way back. Way way back to the oldest days of retailing. Shops would bundle together a range of items they could lay their hands on, and sell them.
Whether they still make sense is a good question.
The statistics say they don't really make sense to a lot of Australians.
If you look at the stores that are going well these days, many of them are specialists, like Swedish clothing retailer H&M.
(This is also true if you look at the retailers Mr Lew already owns. They include Just Jeans, which does casual clothing, and also Smiggle, which specialises in stationery.)
There is one very successful department store in Australia however. Its name is Kmart.
Kmart is killing it with a strategy based almost entirely on own-brand items - the opposite of Myer's branded concessions strategy.
If you only look at Myer's rising profit, you could get the impression all is well. But in fact, total sales fell 0.6 per cent and when you cancel out the effect of closing a few stores and opening others, you're left with sales growth of just 0.3%. That's below population growth and below economic growth.
Myer split off from Coles in 2006 and joined the sharemarket on its own two feet in 2009. Since then its share price has collapsed. If you invested $100 in Myer on day one, you'd around $30 left.
David Jones was on an only slightly better trajectory when it was bought out by South African retail giant Woolworths (no relation to our one) in 2014.
One problem Myer and David Jones have is each other. Perhaps there is room for one big successful up-market department store chain in Australia. But two?
Up-market department stores did better in the 2000s when the economy was thriving.
They rely on people who have some spare money and are shopping partly for leisure.
Most Aussies - even the ones who earn lots of money - don't feel they have spare cash these days. We buy from Aldi and Kmart now, that is, when we're not sourcing cheap stuff online.
And let's not even start on department stores websites. They often seem worried that if they offer things online nobody will come into the stores, so they sabotage their own sites. And anyway, if your store is full of concessions, won't people go to that brand's own website to buy the stuff?
There's just not a lot going on for the department store concept right now. And the future could be worse.
THE 'STAY AT HOME' ECONOMY
Often, America shows Australia a glimpse of its future. Trends over there are slightly ahead of where they are here
The American economy has been described as a "stay at home" economy. Grocery delivery is easy on Amazon. Netflix brings you your movies. Takeaway is easier to get than ever via UberEats. Facebook means you can check in with your friend without physically seeing them. And you can even get legal marijuana deliveries in California.
In related news, Amazon is the second biggest retailer in America (behind discounter Walmart), and department store failures are now endemic.
Macy's is shutting down hundreds of stores. JC Penney's is shutting down hundreds of stores. Sears says it could go bankrupt any moment. Hundreds of malls that relied on those big department stores are going broke too.
If that's a glimpse of Australia's future, Mr Lew might wake up one day soon and find he wasted his money on Myer.
Jason Murphy is an economist. He publishes the blog Thomas The Thinkengine. Follow Jason on Twitter @Jasemurphy
