The department store has been sold to private equity company Anchorage for what reports say is about $100 million. That’s a lot less than what the 184yo retailer was bought for by South Africa’s Woolworths Holdings (aka not the group with the supermarkets here) – it paid $2.1 billion back in 2014. And it hasn’t been an easy road since then – Woolworths wrote down more than $1 billion from the value of the business in 2018 and 2019. Despite that, David Jones boss Scott Fyfe says it’s in a good place to turn things around, but he wouldn’t say if any of the company’s 7,500 staff will be affected by the sale. Anchorage – which has bought other retailers like the ill-fated Dick Smith – says DJs is “profitable, cash-generative, and self-funding, and we are confident in David Jones’ next chapter as the retailer of the future with a seamless omnichannel experience”. That’s fancy retail talk for doing brick-and-mortar stores and online retailing.